An Overview of Breeding Objectives to Improve the Economically Important Traits in Oat

Abstract

The history of the modern oat may be traced to its intergeneric contamination of wheat and barley in southwest Asia, particularly in Mesopotamia and due to its use in only forage crop rather than a staple food in most of the countries it’s been neglected. There are just a few economically cultivated species of this self-pollinated crop, including A. sativa, A. nuda, and A. byzantina. After rice, wheat, maize, sorghum, and barley, oat production comes in at number six and in terms of oat production (FAO 2019). The present review was undertaken in order to address the present scenario of oats utilization and its consideration in research. The work majorly focussed in present are β glucan (due to its nutritional status) and disease resistance (majorly powdery mildew, pyrenophora leaf spot and crown rust) throughout the world but some drawbacks is that oats is usually neglected because of its limited use as forage value and also of its hexaploid nature. The different breeding methods employed till date for crop improvement are described in the chapter viz, traditional methods, diversity studies, mapping strategies, Marker aided breeding Association mapping, Genomic assisted breeding etc. Some of the qtls mapped by various researchers for different traits is also been listed in this article. Apart from these studies, the novel techniques which are still lacking in oats has much scope now to get it utilized through various improvement programmes like in other cereal crops.