Advanced Molecular Plant Breeding ― Meeting the Challenge of Food Security

This new volume, Advanced Molecular Plant Breeding: Meeting the Challenge of Food Security, aims to provide a better understanding of molecular plant breeding in order to boost the quality of agriculture produce, to increase crop yields and to provide nutritious food for everyone by 2050, when the global population is expected to reach a new height of about 10 billion. The challenge to provide quality food for such an increased population will be exacerbated by the depletion of natural resources and by shrinking arable land areas. However, scientists believe the challenge can be met by implementing new and improved techniques of quantitative trait inheritance in plant breeding. Integrating genomics and molecular biology into appropriate tools and methodologies can help to create genetically engineered plants, such as by using biotic and abiotic stress tolerance, molecular markers, ‘-omics’ technology, and genome editing.

The milestone of whole genome sequencing from Arabidopsis to rice has opened the door to a new era of functional genomics, which aims to determine the functions of all the genes identified in their genomes, which will help in the improvement of crop species qualitatively and quantitatively in order to meet the ongoing challenges of doubling world food production by 2050.

This important volume provides recent knowledge of advanced plant breeding tools researchers, teachers, graduate and post-graduate students in plant sciences, and those in plant biotechnology, applied botany, agricultural sciences, plant genetics and molecular biology.

The contributors to this book were selected from a wide and diverse range of institutions. They provide an abundance of new research and knowledge on advanced plant breeding tools and techniques.

D. N. Bharadwaj, PhD, is currently an expert and examiner at several Indian universities and a reviewer for various scientific journals in India and abroad. He was formerly Professor of Plant Sciences at Haramaya University, Ethiopia (Africa), under the United Nations Development Program (UNPD) and was also Professor of Biology under a UNDP program at the Eritrea Institute of Technology, Asmara, Eritrea. In addition, he was Head of the Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding at C.S. Azad University of Agriculture & Technology, Kanpur, India.

Other former positions include lecturer at Kanpur University, where he taught several botany subjects to undergraduate and postgraduate students, and Scientist Pool Officer of the CSIR (Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, Govt. of India). He has made significant contributions to several crop breeding programs of ICAR (Indian Council of Agriculture Research) on such projects such as cotton, soybean, sorghum, groundnut, wheat, and barley etc. He also worked as a seed production officer at the National Seed Project of ICAR.

During his stay of more than nine years in foreign countries, he visited over 20 countries and had opportunities to visit various educational institutes, universities, and their laboratories. With over 40 years of teaching and research experience, he supervised above many agriculture students in MSc and PhD programs. Dr. Bharadwaj has participated in several national and international workshops, seminars, and symposia and presented 15 research papers. He has published over 40 refereed research papers in national and international journals, contributed several book chapters, and published a dozen or so textbooks and reference books with Indian and foreign publishers. He also awarded a best scientists award in 1998 by the American Biographical Institute, Inc. USA.