Summary

While quality assurance (QA) and quality control (QC) have similar goals they are both focused on different aspects of a plant breeding process. In this lesson we covered the role and application of markers in improving QA and QC for a plant breeding program as well as the verification processes required to establish the true identity and genotypes of various germplasm created e.g parental lines, breeding populations, yield lines, etc,. It is essential that breeding data generated by markers is understood and interpreted correctly so as to assure the QC process-thus several examples of tabular data were used in this lesson with explanations that guides the reader in understanding SNP marker generated breeding data before seed production and marketing can start.

References

• Sun, C. et al. 1998. From indica and japonica splitting in common wild rice DNA to the origin and evolution of Asian cultivated rice. Agricultural Archaeology 1998:21-29
• Daniel, I.O., Adetumbi, J.A., Oyelakin, O. O., Olakojo, S.A., Ajala, M.O. and S.O. Onagbesan (2011). Application of SSR markers for genetic purity analysis of parental inbred lines and some commercial hybrid maize ( Zea mays L.). IITA Ibandan, Nigeria, 2011