Marker-Assisted Breeding

Lifeasible has developed a fully-fledged MAB platform that can provide customers with a variety of breeding strategies to help scientists and plant breeders develop plant varieties with high productivity, great nutritional value, as well as strong resistance against biotic and abiotic stress.

What Is Marker-Assisted Breeding?

Marker-assisted breeding (MAB) refers to a modern breeding process where selection of targeted traits is based on specific molecular markers, such as restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP), amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP), random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD), microsatellites or simple sequence repeat (SSR), and single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers. Combining genetic linkage mapping and genomics, plants with desired traits can be easily identified and selected, and plant traits can be changed and improved based on genotypic analysis.

MAB encompasses several different breeding strategies, namely marker-assisted selection (MAS), marker-assisted backcrossing (MABC), marker-assisted cyclic selection (MARS), and genome-wide selection (GWS) or genomic selection (GS). Compared with conventional breeding methods, MAB has significant advantages, such as higher effectiveness and efficiency, saving time and accelerating breeding progress.

Figure 1. The MAB process

What We Offer

• MAS Service

MAS combines DNA marker detection and selection with traditional breeding. The success of MAS is related to multiple factors such as the genetic basis of the trait and the number of crop individuals. Our expert team has extensive breeding experience and can provide assistance with MAS for many different crops, including rice, tomato, barley, cotton, wheat, etc. Our services are not only applicable to plant disease resistance breeding, but also to the improvement of traits related to product quality.

• MABC Service

MABC is a very widely used breeding method and is also considered the simplest form of MAS. MABC achieves the purpose of improving target traits by transferring one or several genes/QTL of interest from the donor parent to a superior cultivar or elite breeding line (the recurrent parent). Our MABC service is available for many species (e.g., rice, wheat, maize, barley, pear, millet, soybean, tomato, etc.) and can be used to select disease/pest/drought resistant plants.

• Marker-assisted Gene Pyramiding (MAGP) Service

MAGP enables the transfer of multiple genes/QTL associated with single or multiple traits into a cultivar lacking these traits. We also provide MABC-based gene pyramiding services, including stepwise, simultaneous/synchronized and convergent backcrossing. Our experts will design a personalized breeding plan based on factors such as the number of genes/QTLs, the number of parents, and the heritability of the target traits.

• MARS Service

MARS is a scheme that enables genotypic selection and intercrossing within the same crop season. It provides higher selection efficiency and faster selection process, and can integrate multiple favorable genes/QTLs from different parents. MARS is generally used to identify and select multiple genomic regions involved in the expression of complex traits.

• GS Service

GS is a strategy to select desirable individuals using all the available molecular marker information covering the whole genome based on genomic estimated breeding value (GEBV). It is the simultaneous selection of tens or hundreds of thousands of markers and does not require significant testing and identification of a subset of markers associated with the trait. The implementation of GS involves high-throughput marker technology, high-performance computing and appropriate statistical methods.

Why Choose Lifeasible?

At Lifeasible, our teams of experienced geneticists, mathematicians, optimization specialists, statisticians, computer scientists, software engineers, and crop breeders have developed a state-of-the-art plant breeding platform to provide tailored protocols for marker discovery and development, population development, genetic map construction, MAS strategy, and other critical aspects of your breeding program. We provide reliable customized services to help you accomplish your research goals.