OPPORTUNITIES AND CONSTRAINTS FOR MARKER-ASSISTED SELECTION IN MACADAMIA BREEDING

This paper reviews the potential of marker-assisted selection (MAS) for breeding of macadamia. Many papers suggest MAS can be applied to breeding, but there are few reports of its implementation. The constraints to the application of MAS are reviews. The critical first step in is a comparison of alternative strategies. For macadamia, detection of associations between marker-QTL’s using multiple families linked through pedigree is the most attractive strategy. SSR markers are a pre-requisite for application in macadamia. Research is needed to evaluate the extent of linkage disequilibrium across the breeding population and response to breeding strategies with MAS.