Breeding the oil palm (Elaeis guineensis Jacq.) for climate change

Breeding the oil palm (Elaeis guineensis Jacq.) for climate change requires multidisciplinary and collaborative research by nature: indeed – besides genetics and structural and functional genomics – almost all disciplines related to life sciences are involved. Research work also relies on the identification of genetic variation in the strategies of response to stress developed by the plant: this implies the exploration of resources provided by natural variation, germplasm collections, selected genitors from breeding programs together with material of interest collected from smallholders. The phenotyping of selected plant material under biotic/abiotic stress will involve new methods for high-throughput phenotyping and genomic approaches will be followed for the identification of genes underlying the variation of traits which will be used as selection targets. Also, improvements in understanding how climate change may influence chemical and physical processes in soils, how this may affect nutrient availability, and how the plant responds to changed availability of nutrients will also influence oil palm breeding programs. Molecular approaches and tools have great potential to optimize patterns of plant breeding, especially for perennial species. In recent years, there has been an exponential increase in molecular resources and methods aimed at identifying polymorphisms which control the traits of interest and exploring the mechanisms linking these polymorphisms to phenotypes. With genomic resources becoming increasingly available for the oil palm (sequencing, resequencing and chips development) the exploration of the genetic basis of complex traits such as oil yield or resistance to disease is now possible. Consequently the availability and sharing of such a large amount of data is currently reshaping most of oil palm breeding strategies.

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