Physical mapping technologies for the identification and characterization of mutated genes to crop quality

The improvement of quality traits in food and industrial crops is an important breeding objective for both developed and developing countries in order to add value to the crop and thereby increasing farmers' income. It has been well established that the application of mutagens can be a very important approach for manipulating many crop characteristics including quality. While mutation induction using nuclear techniques such as gamma irradiation is a power tool in generating new genotypes with favourable alleles for improving crop quality in plant breeding, a more thorough understanding of gene expression, gene interactions, and physical location will improve ability to manipulate and control genes, and directly lead to crop improvement. Physical mapping technologies, molecularmarkers and molecular cytogenetic techniques are tools available with the potential to enhance the ability to tag genes and gene complexes to facilitate the selection of desirable genotypes in breeding programmes, including those based on mutation breeding.