Natural Variation as a Tool to Investigate Nutrient Use Efficiency in Plants - Nutrient Use Efficiency in Plants - page 45

Conclusions
In light of scarce resources, increasing fertiliser production costs and the
demand for greater crop production, the development of nutrient-efficient
varieties is increasingly important. Both nutrient uptake and metabolic path-
ways are under the control of a complex regulatory network involving many
genes. The identification of large-effect QTL/genes is therefore a challenge
(Vinod and Heuer 2012 ). With the experiences gained in QTL mapping and
the rapid development of genome-sequencing and molecular-marker technol-
ogies, more high-impact, large-effect QTL will surely be identified in the
future. These efforts require expertise in different disciplines and, therefore,
modern breeding is being implemented more and more in multidisciplinary
teams involving breeders, physiologists and molecular biologists/geneticists.
With the advances in molecular breeding technologies, breeders now have
access to genes from wild species and unadapted genotypes that are difficult
to use in breeding programmes due to crossing barriers and their poor
agronomic performance. Molecular breeding therefore provides an exciting
opportunity to use these gene pools effectively for the development of
well-adapted and nutrient-efficient plants.
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