| In this paper, the current scenario and challenges that crop improvement faces in response to the increasing world demand for food and biofuels is described. The fact that the rate of improvement in crop performance has plummeted in a number of important crops is discussed. To revert this situation, in my opinion, a truly interdisciplinary approach should be applied to the breeding process, making use of the vast amount of knowledge recently generated in the areas of genomics, ecophysiology, statistics, bioinformatics, etc. . Moreover, a special emphasis should be put on phenotyping which -in my opinion- is the new bottleneck, considering the increasingly fast pace and continuously decreasing costs of genotypic data generation. In the meanwhile, a... |
