Plant Breeding in the Omics Era

Introduction to Plant Breeding.- Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture.- Inbred Development.- Population Improvement.- Heterosis and Inter-Specific Hybridization.- Mutations and Epigenetics.- Genetic Engineering and Transgenic Breeding.- DNA Sequencing, other Omics and Synthetic Biology.- Breeding Self-fertilizing Plants: From Inbred to Hybrid Cultivars.- Breeding Open Pollinated, Hybrid and Transgenic Outcrossing Species.- Polyploidy and Plant Breeding.- Seeds, Clones and Perennials.- Diversity, Intellectual Property and Plant Variety Protection.

Rodomiro Ortiz is Professor of Genetics and Plant Breeding at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) in Alnarp, Sweden. He worked as geneticist at Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina (UNALM), Centro Internacional de la Papa (CIP, Lima, Perú), Rutgers University (Chatsworth, New Jersey, USA) and International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA, Ibadan, Nigeria), held a Nordic professorship in plant genetic resources at the Danish Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University (merged now with the University of Copenhagen, Denmark), served as Director at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT, Patancheru, Telangana, India), IITA, and the Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maíz y Trigo (CIMMYT, El Batán, México), and independent free-lance consultant for international, regional and national organizations engaged in agricultural research-for-development. CGIAR awarded IITA in 1994 the prestigious King Baudouin Award for the multidisciplinary research of the team working in plantain and banana improvement, in which Ortiz was both a hands-on researcher and program leader. His professional expertise includes genetics, genetic resources, germplasm enhancement, plant breeding, agro-biotechnology, biosafety, intellectual property rights, and developing agro-ecosystem and livelihood system approaches aiming sustainable intensification of agriculture in the developing world. His h-index was 44 according to Google Scholar at end 2014.