Oil crops for 21st century – new tools for tackling changing environment

Abstract

Creation of new oil crop varieties using classical breeding methods is a long-term process, sometimes not efficient enough to meet demands of changing environment and market demands of 21st century. The development and introduction into breeding programs of new techniques, such as phenotyping, genomic selection and genome editing, opened the way for more efficient introduction of desired traits into commercial varieties. Although all these new techniques have their shortcomings and demand some time for optimization and validation on the given crop/system, it is expected that in the future they will facilitate the identification of target genes and markers for complex traits, as well as adaptation of oil crops to permanent changes in the environment and the market. Researchers from Institute of Field and Vegetable Crops (IFVCNS) have already started to work on creation of oil crops for 21st century and the introduction of new techniques of genotyping and phenotyping for more efficient data collection to identify quantitative properties and explain the genetic basis of agronomically important traits. An overview of the projects and research activities of IFVCNS related to introduction of new breeding techniques and their application in IFVCNS oil crops breeding programs is presented in this paper.