Use of Molecular Breeding to Develop Climate-ready Crops

Molecular breeding is essential for developing more resilient crops to combat the challenge of an ever-changing climate. The departure from traditional approaches is a critical step that allows for the focused improvement of genetic qualities essential for resilience. Heat and drought tolerance are two qualities that can be identified and incorporated more quickly with marker-assisted selection (MAS) and genomic selection (GS). Precision in breeding is achieved by focusing on specific molecular pathways. Numerous successful studies have demonstrated the power of molecular breeding to improve crops such as wheat, rice, maize, chickpea, tomato, soybean, jujube, etc. Many studies have shown that combining GWAS with next-generation sequencing technology improves map resolution, precise locus identification, and QTL evidence/genes/alleles. This chapter describes the SWOT analysis of molecular breeding where the authors have evaluated the advantages, disadvantages, opportunities, and risks of molecular breeding demonstrating it as a powerful innovative technology that has vast potential applications in agriculture to develop climate-ready crops. Therefore, using molecular breeding to develop climate-ready crops is a promising technique for guaranteeing food security amid climatic uncertainty.