Smart breeding

Precision farming or SMART Breeding or MAS is a form of plant breeding and animal breeding. SMART stands for " Selection with Markers and Advanced Reproductive Technologies ," MAS for " marker assisted selection". When selecting the generations of parents that are crossed with each other, the researchers no longer rely only on external characteristics. The genome is analyzed then select the appropriate crossing partners.

The precision farming based on the same laboratory technology such as plant biotechnology, with one important difference: the offspring will be installed no foreign genes into the DNA at the end, so there are no transgenic organisms.

Plant

Technology

When choosing the right plants is set to so-called genetic markers. Using short, artificially produced DNA snippets ( probes) that attach themselves to specific genetic markers in the genome, researchers can quickly see if the desired gene variants are present in a plant. Since the Genmarkertest works in young seedlings, in contrast to traditional breeding, only the nursery of plants necessary to wait for the, saving time. Much of the breeding selection work can already be done very early in the lab. An important limitation of this technique is that the desired genes must already exist in a plant to zoom breed they can.

Examples

Based on the smart breeding could be developed by Monsanto, a soybean variety that produces less linolenic acid, which is responsible for the harmful trans fatty acids in the processing of soy. The International Rice Research Institute succeeded in growing a variety of rice that can withstand lasting several weeks, flooding the fields. The precision farming is not limited to cereals. So for the ketchup industry tomatoes were grown, which have a higher sugar content. HortResearch succeeded in developing a variety of apple with red-colored flesh.

Animals

In animal breeding MAS is called genomic selection.