Genetics and Genomics applied to sunflower breeding

FILIPPI CARLA; JEREMIAS ZUBRZYCKI; VERONICA LIA; RUTH HEINZ; NORMA PANIEGO; ESTEBAN HOPP

. En Sunflowers: growth and development, environmental influences and pest/diseases

Nova SciencePublishers

Lugar: Nueva York, USA; Año: 2014; p. 61 - 94

Since sunflower domestication by pre-hispanic American cultures at least 3000 BC, the use of empiric and scientifically based genetics led to an amazing genetic diversification of the crop going from sophisticated nutraceutical applications up to ornamental purposes, including the traditional confectionary and oilseed production. Commercial sunflower breeding based on genetics started in the first half of the twentieth century and genomics at its endings, with breeding efforts being directed towards the most economically important traits such as increasing seed and oil yield, improving quality traits and conferring resistance or tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses. In the last few years, advancements in genotyping and sequencing technologies allowed the development of increasingly dense genetic and physical maps, enabling the development of new breeding strategies based on molecular markers, like QTL mapping, association mapping and genomic selection. The need to increase efficiency and precision has motivated the application of marker assisted selection (MAS) in sunflower breeding programs. This chapter will review the different genomic breeding approaches that are currently used to improve sunflower tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses, increase oil quality and enhance agronomic yield associated traits in order to reduce the gap between potential and actual sunflower production in the present cultivated sunflower area and under global weather changing conditions that negatively impact on it. An overview of the state of the art on sunflower genomics is presented and the potential of high throughput sequencing and genotyping technologies for crop breeding is discussed.