The 4^th National Conference on Biotechnology of Southern Vietnam 2016

Ho Chi Minh City Oct 31 – Nov 1, 2015

Key Note by BUI CHI BUU (The Institute of Agricultural Sciences for Southern Vietnam)

Vietnam has a long history of coping with weather- and climate-related hazards such as storms, floods and droughts. El Niño is recognized as a factor that should be considered in disaster management in Southern Vietnam. severe drought and  salinity  intrusion  has  been  occurring  in  Mekong  River  Delta  (MRD)   of  Vietnam  and  has caused varying degrees of damage to agriculture, fisheries and the livelihoods of people in the region. All efforts to overcome poverty must include an increased crop productivity, and good quality properties through plant tolerance to flooding, drought, heat and salinity via marker-assisted selection.

Simple sequence repeats (SSRs) have been the marker of choice for crop molecular breeding due to the high level of polymorphism, technical simplicity and low cost. Recent advances  in genomics have led to the discovery of abundant single nucleotide polymorphism (SNPs) which have  enormous potential for crop molecular breeding.

Recent advances in next-generation sequencing (NGS) and single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotyping promise to greatly accelerate crop improvement if properly deployed. Using NGS for low-cost genotyping, called “genotyping by sequencing” (GBS), has become increasingly popular.  Highly multiplexed fixed array platforms have enabled powerful approaches such as genome-wide association study (GWAS).

Sequencing costs have decreased by three orders of magnitude over the past decade allowing species with larger genomes to become model species with novel approaches of “editing”, “in silico sequencing”. Knowledge of the full genome sequence is clearly just the beginning and work now will turn to elucidating all of the genes and the hard work of defining their function.

In Southern Vietnam, elucidation  of  the  association  between  nucleotide  changes  and  phenotypic  changes  has  been  a  big challenge  in  the  molecular  genetics  and  breeding  of  rice, cassava, soybean and maize. The  efforts  have  revealed  new opportunities  to  accelerate  both  the  genetic  dissection  of  complex  traits  and  the  integration  of genomics with crop breeding.

The choice of parents for crossing, when having such wide genetic diversity available, requires careful characterization and evaluation of the germplasm as well as good knowledge and breeding skills to make the right decisions.

The expression of transgenes in transgenic corn and soybean can be verified by using appropriate molecular techniques, then some corn GM genotypes have been commercialized with new regulations to accept the biotech varieties in large sacle areas.

See http://iasvn.org