Abstract
The dawdling development in genetic improvement of cotton with conventional breeding program is chiefly due to lack of complete knowledge on and precise manipulation of fiber productivity and quality. Naturally available cotton continues to be a resource for the upcoming breeding program, and contemporary technologies to exploit the available natural variation are outlined in this paper for further improvement of fiber. Particularly emphasis is given to application, obstacles, and perspectives of marker-assisted breeding since it appears to be more promising in manipulating novel genes that are available in the cotton germplasm. Deployment of system quantitative genetics in marker-assisted breeding program would be essential to realize its role in cotton. At the same time, role of genetic engineering and in vitro mutagenesis cannot be ruled out in genetic improvement of cotton.
Highlights
Plant trichomes exhibit number of biologically important roles including protection against biotic and abiotic factors, water absorption, secretion, alluring mechanisms, and more importantly, seed dispersal [1]
The cotton fiber is composed of nearly pure cellulose, the largest component of plant biomass; it is an outstanding model for the study of cellulose biosynthesis besides plant cell wall and cell elongation [5]
SSRs are often markers of choice and regarded as useful markers for map construction in cotton because (i) SSRs are simple PCR-based, codominant, informative, prompt DNA markers and amenable for automation and multiplex or high-throughput analysis [65]; (ii) on an average, there is one microsatellite in every 170 kb DNA of the cotton genome [82]; (iii) SSR markers could provide a tool for identifying loci that are subgenome A or D specific; (iv) SSRs are present in the expression sequence tags (ESTs) at a frequency of 1.7% [83], and dense consensus maps including a number of EST-based functional markers become fundamental tools for comparing linkage groups (LGs) and quantitative trait loci (QTL) derived from different pedigrees
Summary
Plant trichomes exhibit number of biologically important roles including protection against biotic and abiotic factors, water absorption, secretion, alluring mechanisms, and more importantly, seed dispersal [1]. While the majority of plant trichomes are multicellular, cotton (Gossypium spp.) produces unicellular seed trichomes commonly called “fibers,” which are of considerable economic importance and make cotton as the leading cash crop in the world. Cotton plays important role in everyone’s life from the time we dry our faces on a soft cotton towel in the morning until we slide between fresh cotton sheets at night. It provides thousands of useful products and supports millions of jobs as it moves from field to fabric. Genetic improvement of cotton fiber and cellulose may lead to the improvement of diverse biomass crops [1]. It is necessary to genetically improve cotton productivity and quality since it has several economical and social applications
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