Author Description

Variation among wheat plants serves as the raw material for varietal development or plant breeding, allowing the selection of plants which are suited to particular environments, management methods or markets. The superiority of an identified line is normally validated through a series of trials, and once established the new variety is registered and released for cultivation by a competent authority. In this chapter, we review the methods used to develop new varieties of wheat, including both traditional breeding and modern molecular breeding using marker-assisted selection, genomic selection and next-generation phenotyping. We also consider the criteria used by both plant breeders and farmers to select between available varieties.