Molecular Breeding of Cereals for Aluminum Resistance

Aluminum (Al) toxicity is the primary factor limiting crop production on acidic soils worldwide. In addition to an application of lime for soil amelioration, Al-resistant plant varieties have been deployed to raise productivity on such hostile soils. This has been possible due to the exploitation of genetic variation in resistance to Al3+ between different plant species and genotypes. In recent years, various molecular biology tools such as molecular markers and structural and functional genomics have become an integral component of plant improvement programs and have been applied for breeding cereal crops for Al resistance. This chapter reviews the progress made on various aspects of molecular breeding for Al resistance such as genetics, molecular mapping, comparative mapping, marker-assisted selection, candidate gene discovery and validation, and allele mining in key cereal crops including wheat, barley, rice, maize, oats, sorghum, and rye.