Genomic Selection to Accelerate Breeding for a More Rapidly Changing Environment.

With the increased pace of climate change plant breeders are faced with the challenge of rapidly improving tolerance to emerging environmental stresses in elite germplasm. However, with conventional breeding, progress towards overcoming this challenge can be slow due to the complex genetic nature of many stress tolerance traits. Genomic selection (GS) is one promising breeding tool that can help increase the rate of genetic gain for complex traits by enabling faster breeding cycles. With GS the goal is to predict breeding values of selection candidates using a prediction model that is developed using a representative set of individuals that have both phenotypic and genome-wide marker data. Selections can then be made based on the predicted breeding values before phenotypic data can be collected. With the decreasing costs in genotyping, especially since the development of genotyping by sequencing, GS is becoming increasingly more feasible for a range of breeding programs. We therefore expect that GS will be an important tool for plant breeding, especially as increased rates of genetic gain are needed to keep pace with a rapidly changing environment.