ISSN 2756-3847
International Journal of Plant Breeding and Genetics ISSN 5756-2145 Vol. 2 (3) pp. 127-137, March, 2015. © International Scholars Journals
Review
A report on traditional and atomic rearing methodologies for enhancing fiber quality attributes in cotton
*Ryan Drake, Jim Gosling E Seth and Myers Mitchell
Department of Breeding, Genetics, and Plant Molecular Biology, School of Biological Sciences, University of Mumbai, Mumbai, India.
E-mail: [email protected]
Accepted 21 February, 2014
Abstract
The cultivated Gossypium spp. represents the most important, natural fibre crop in the world. India is the only country cultivating all the four cultivated species of cotton. Among the Gossypium spp., Gossypium hirsutum is the most cultivated species in many countries. Breeding for high cotton yield is still the primary goal of cotton breeding programs, but improving fibre quality has become increasingly important. The enhancement of fibre quality traits like fibre length, strength, and fibre fineness is an essential requirement for the modern textile industry. G. hirsutum is characterized by its high lint yield while Gossypium barbadense has good fibre quality. Through a conventional breeding strategy, introgression of useful alleles for fibre quality from wild species and G. barbadense to G. hirsutum will be the effective way to improve the fibre quality traits. The identification of the stable quantitative trailt loci (QTLs) affecting fiber traits across different generations will be very helpful in molecular marker-assisted selection to improve fiber quality of cotton cultivars. In this review, we present an overview of the genetics and conventional and molecular breeding techniques that have been used to increase the favorable fibre quality traits in cotton.
Key words: Cotton, fibre quality traits, simple sequence repeat (SSR), restricted fragment length polymorphism (RFLP), amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP), quantitative trait loci (QTLs).