Trends and Prospect of Basic Research on Root and Tuber Crops in China
China is the world’s biggest producer of root and tuber crops. Potato, sweet potato and cassava play important roles in promoting agriculture industrialization and food security, but their basic research, as compared to‘major crops’such as rice and maize, is much retarded due to difficulty in molecular study and breeding. Therefore, germplasm enhancement and new cultivar breeding are essential to promote utilization of root and tuber crops, in which molecular breeding is the trends and driving force. This review aims at briefly highlighting the advances of research on root and tuber crops in China through deepening their germplasm exploration and functional genomics as well as the joint efforts towards the common and special scientific questions they faced, which provides the reference for improved breeding technology in these crops.
sweet potatocassavapotatokey agronomical traitregulatory mechanismbreedingtrends and perspective