Improving crops to meet the diverse needs of humanity for consumption, medicinal, construction and landscaping purposes has been quite a challenge to plant breeders. Through conventional breeding many crop varieties have been developed to address these needs, but rapid population growth, dwindling natural resources, climate change and a more quality-oriented population have intensified the need for varieties with higher yield potential, better resource-use efficiency and more balanced nutrient composition. The deployment of molecular technologies in crop breeding has enabled dissection of genetic factors that underlie the expression of quantitative traits which have proven difficult to improve through conventional breeding.

This volume gives a good insight into applications of molecular tools in plant breeding. It begins with a good background of molecular breeding tools and approaches and then details their applications in precision breeding to improve specific plant traits such as yield, physiological traits, quality and biotic and abiotic stress resistance. Plant improvement programmes highlighted range from cereals to root crops, oil and fibre crops, fruit trees, forest trees, and forage and turf plants. The authors appropriately end the publication with a section on different intellectual property tools that are available for plant variety protection. The book is thus an excellent repertoire of information for students and breeders alike of how molecular tools can be used to characterize germplasm, and also to guide rapid introduction of specific genes and quantitative trait loci into plants to produce varieties that meet increasingly complex plant breeding goals.