STUDY OF THE GENETIC DIVERSITY OF CROPS IN THE ERA OF MODERN PLANT BREEDING

Abstract

Modern plant breeding has transformed food production and will be essential to guaranteeing food security on a global scale. Striking a balance between increasing crop output in response to climate change and reducing crop failure in difficult conditions is crucial for sustainable agriculture. A fuller understanding of how plant breeding affects agricultural genetic diversity is necessary to make this trade-off. Molecular marker technology has been applied to research agricultural genetic diversity throughout the past three decades. Our results disproved our hypothesis that current plant breeding diminishes agricultural genetic diversity by revealing temporal patterns of genetic diversity. This review analyzed theoretical and empirical estimates of agricultural genetic variety, focusing on how genetic diversity varies in response to artificial selection through time, in an effort to understand these oscillations. Numerous studies on agricultural genetic diversity lacked sufficient experimental design, including technical biases related to cultivar and genome sampling, and were not intended to look at how certain plant breeding efforts affected diversity. Theoretical research on how plant breeding affects agricultural genetic diversity has received little attention. Computer simulations of five standard breeding strategies show that plant breeding has a considerable impact on the preservation of heterozygosity over generations. It is crucial that additional plant breeding research investigates the geographical and temporal diversity of agricultural genetics in order to achieve sustainable crop output.