Wheat breeding in northern China: Achievements and technical advances

Common wheat is the major cereal crop that underpins the food safety of China. Both winter wheat and spring wheat are grown on -24 minion ha. This review aims to summarize the current status of wheat production and breeding progress in the northern wheat production areas of the country, and to review recently advanced technologies being applied in wheat breeding, including the use of dwarf-male-sterile (DMS) wheat, speed breeding and specialized wheat breeding SNP chips. Crossing is the initial step in most breeding programs. DMS wheat is a convenient tool for large scale production of hybrid seed. Speed breeding or accelerated generation turnover attempts to reduce the time taken in cultivar development. Several different SNP chips are high-throughput, genome-wide genotyping platforms for breeding and research. (C) 2019 Crop Science Society of China and Institute of Crop Science, CAAS. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of KeAi Communications Co., Ltd.