Future Prospects of Molecular Markers in Plants

The last —30 years have witnessed a continuous evolution of new molecular marker systems from restriction fragment length polymorphisms, random amplified polymorphic DNAs, and amplified fragment length polymorphisms to present-day popular marker systems such as simple sequence repeats (SSRs), single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), and diversity array technologies. Advent of low-cost and highthroughput sequencing technologies, commonly called next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies have increased the speed of SSR and SNP discovery. NGS technologies in combination with restriction enzymes are now ready for detecting genome-wide polymorphism and new marker systems like RAD-tag sequencing, genotyping by sequencing are becoming popular. It seems that NGS-based marker systems will be dominating marker systems in future. These new emerging marker systems are expected to facilitate enhanced adoption of modern genetics and breeding approaches like genome-wide association studies and genome-wide selection that generally require markers at high-density in crop plants