DNA analyses and their applications in plant breeding

Abstract

In recent years, molecular markers have been developed based on the more detailed knowledge of genome structure. Considerable emphasis has been laid on the use of molecular markers in practical breeding and genotype identification. This review attempts to give an account of different molecular markers currently available for genome mapping and for tagging different traits – restriction fragment length polymorphisms (RFLPs), random amplified polymorphic DNAs (RAPDs), amplified fragment length polymorphisms (AFLPs) and microsatellites. Other markers, expressed sequence tags (ESTs) and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are also mentioned. The importance of structural, functional genomic and comparative mapping is also discussed.