INTEGRATING THE CENTRAL DOGMA WITH PLANT BREEDING

¹ National Center for Genome Resources, 1800-A Old Pecos Road, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87124 USA

² Pioneer Hi-Bred Int'l, 7300 NW 62nd, P.O. Box 1004, Johnston, Iowa 50131-1004 USA

The contribution of plant breeding to agricultural productivity during the last 60 years has been spectacular. This has happened in large part because plant breeders have been adept at assimilating and integrating information from extensive evaluations of progeny derived from elite germplasm. Despite the past impressive gains, there is evidence that additional progress based on extensive progeny testing is limited. Future progress may depend on the Plant Breeder's ability to integrate information from technologies that are being developed to reveal the details of Biology's Central Dogma. To date, Plant Breeders have largely ignored the Central Dogma, and have found only limited utility for information derived from molecular technologies. This has occurred because the initial applications of molecular technologies have been aimed at discovering details of genome structure, regulation of gene expression and translation, and components of metabolic pathways, without regard to varietal development. The development of strategies to identify Quantitative Trait Loci in plant species is an example of how discovery and varietal development have been treated as separate processes. The result has been that the inference base of QTL studies have been biased and limited. An alternative strategy will be to utilize the diversity of existing breeding populations to simultaneously pursue discovery and development. The challenge will be to develop information technologies that will integrate information from multiple heterogenous databases in formats that are useful for both discovery and development.