Crop Improvement through Pre-Breeding Technologies

Pre-breeding includes basic research to achieve wide crosses, and activities that facilitate the use of exotic materials or wild relatives. Pre-breeding consists of identifying a useful character, capturing its genetic diversity and putting those genes into usable form. Pre-breeding activities degined to transferring resistance gene(s) to major diseases and insects, and tolerance to abiotic stresses, from wild relatives into cultivated through using introgression and incorporation techniques. Pre-breeding aims to provide breeders ready to use materials with specific traits of interest as well as a means to broaden the diversity of improved germplasm. It does not differ significantly from general framework of plant breeding and is considered as prior step of sustainable plant breeding.