Quantitative genetics (in its various guises) has been the intellectual cornerstone of plant breeding for close to 100 years. While the roots of Mendelian genetics, and its rediscovery, are firmly in the hands of plant breeders, it was Fisher's (1918) variance decomposition paper that marks the modern foundation for both quantitative genetics and plant breeding. We are now embarking on the age ...

BACKGROUND Genomic selection or genome-wide selection (GS) has been highlighted as a new approach for marker-assisted selection (MAS) in recent years. GS is a form of MAS that selects favourable individuals based on genomic estimated breeding values. Previous studies have suggested the utility of GS, especially for capturing small-effect quantitative trait loci, but GS has not become a popular ...

Impact assessment studies consistently show that the benefits generated by plant breeding are large, positive and widely distributed. Numerous case studies have concluded that investment in plant breeding research generates attractive rates of return compared to alternative investment opportunities, that welfare gains resulting from the adoption of modern varieties (MVs) reach both favoured and...

Genome editing with engineered nucleases enabling site-directed sequence modifications bears a great potential for advanced plant breeding and crop protection. Remarkably, the RNA-guided endonuclease technology (RGEN) based on the clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) and CRISPR-associated protein 9 (Cas9) is an extremely powerful and easy tool that revolutionizes b...

The application of modern biotechnology to plant breeding is considered to be more efficient and quicker than conventional breeding techniques in the development of new and more resilient crop varieties. To test the impact that biotechnology is having on a industrial plant breeding activities, we relate firm level Plant Variety Protection Certificate (PVPC) applications to corresponding expendi...

Breeding systems are important, and often neglected, aspects of the natural biology of organisms, affecting homozygosity and thus many aspects of their biology, including levels and patterns of genetic diversity and genome evolution. Among the different plant mating systems, it is useful to distinguish two types of systems: 'sex systems', hermaphroditic versus male/female and other situations; ...

Open access, freely available online " Some qualities nature carefully fi xes and transmits, but some, and those the fi ner, she exhales with the breath of the individual as too costly to perpetuate. But I notice also that they may become fi xed and permanent in any stock, by painting and repainting them on every individual, until at last nature adopts them and bakes them into her porcelain " —...

Laboratory of Genetics, Department of Plant Sciences, Graduate School of Experimental Plant Sciences, Wageningen University, Dreyenlaan 2, 6703 HA Wageningen, The Netherlands (M.K.); and Laboratory of Plant Breeding, Department of Plant Sciences, Graduate Schools of Experimental Plant Science and Production Ecology and Resource Conservation, P.O. Box 386, Wageningen University, 6700 AJ Wagening...