Developing countries around the world are focusing to increase crop productivity to ensure food and nutritional security and to increase the income levels of  rural farming communities. Due to a variety of abiotic and biotic stresses such as drought, insect pests and disease problems as well as weeds and poor plant nutritional conditions, most crops do not reach their full yield potential in the farmers fields.

Although many factors can increase the yield potential of these crops, it is important to realize that the plant breeders can play a significant role by developing newer varieties that can combat various biotic and abiotic limitations. For the resource poor and subsistence farmers who cannot afford chemical pesticides and fertilizers to increase the yield potential of their crops, access to newer and better yielding varieties may remain the only available option.

In order to develop newer and higher yielding varieties faster, it is critical that the plant breeders have access to new tools and technologies to improve the efficiency of their plant breeding programs. One such technology is molecular markers which is currently being used extensively by plant breeders in the developed world to breed newer and better crops faster. Plant breeders and biotechnologists in developing countries are keen to integrate new tools of molecular markers into their crop improvement programs.

Course Description

This course in Molecular Breeding will be designed not only to cover the molecular techniques available to a plant breeder for crop improvement but also to cover marker assisted selection with successful examples from around the world. In addition, this course will introduce the participants on how to develop international collaborations in plant breeding and approach funding opportunities nationally, regionally and internationally.

Using a participatory approach, the course will foster linkages and provide opportunities for networking among participants to exchange their experiences and establish regional collaborations.