The Limitations of Molecular Quantitative Genetics; How Do We Improve Crops from Here?.

Molecular quantitative genetic and genomic approaches have not met the scientific community’s goals for the genomewide identification of gene and allele function, despite decades of tremendous effort and optimism. While these genomic approaches and their underlying technology have benefited crop improvement, this has not involved proving causal genes or functional polymorphisms. There is little discussion and no clear consensus why gene identification has been minimally successful, but understanding the possible causes will be beneficial to the crop improvement processes and refocusing resources. Similarly, the medical community has experienced similar challenges, but lacks the experimental opportunities to discover these that the crop communities have. Potential causes will be discussed.