Why Double Haploid Production is the Best Method for Genetic Improvement and Genetic Studies of Wheat

Abstract

Double haploid (DH) breeding not only helps in accelerating conventional plant breeding programmes and make early release of cultivars with superior and desirable traits possible but it has greater utility in other research aspects of plant breeding, genetics and genetic engineering. DHs are important constituent of germplasm. These also helps in complementing back cross breeding by transferring genes of interest between wild relatives thus breaking genetic barriers. On the other hand unique complete homozygous nature of DHs, less time requirement to produce a large number of DHs, absence of heterozygosity, efficiency over conventional systems and absence of gametoclonal variation in DHs make them very valuable material for very important genetic and molecular studies. So, DHs are extensively used for genetic studies like studying inheritance of quantitative traits, Quantitative Trait Loci (QTL) mapping, Genomics, gene identification, whole genome mapping and production of stable transgenic plants. In this review, we briefly discuss utility of DHs in these genetic and molecular studies.