Approaches in cereal breeding

The main goal of plant breeding is to improve quality traits, yield and resistance to abiotic and biotic stress factors. A thousand years ago, people selected the best plants, seeds or fruits to produce seed for new crops and food for human and animal nutrition. Modern plant breeding is based on genetic principles and contributes to increases in yield and quality components (contents of protein, amino acids, fat, sucrose, mineral elements etc.). Breeders in conventional breeding programs in the last six decades have made changes to plant phenotypes, significantly improved resistance to diseases, earliness, and frost and drought resistance, and improved scientific farming practices, baking and milling technologies, and beverage production technology. Through bioinformatics and improved technology, breeders have developed ways to improve and accelerate the breeding process to combine desired traits in new genotypes as well to operate at the level of individual cells and their chromosomes. Nowadays, modern biotechnology is used to improve human nutrition, and develop genotypes with significantly higher yields and quality compared with genotypes created by conventional breeding. By genetic modification it is possible to add, modify or delete a trait without interfering between two complete genomes. However, genetically modified crops can be used after their assessment in terms of human health, food safety and the environment.