Genetic analysis and marker delivery for sugarcane breeding

The use of molecular markers in variety development gives breeders the ability to increase selection pressure for key traits by applying selection at stages of the breeding cycle when it is not possible or practical to use phenotyping. Sugarcane?s large heterozygous genome has resulted in the proven parent breeding method where high-combining ability parents are repeatedly crossed, and the progeny screened in the breeding program to identify new genetic combinations generated from these high-value parents. The move in the sugarcane breeding program to larger populations sizes has provided the opportunity to harness the non-additive genetic effects or epistasis and given the ability to conduct higher precision genetic analysis using the high-density SNP markers that has not been possible before.