Conventional and Molecular Approaches for Development of Quality Protein Maize

Abstract

Maize is a nutritionally poor protein quality crop because of deficient in essential amino acid lysine and tryptophan. Genetic improvement  of balanced amino acid profile by application of plant breeding is most viable and sustainable strategies against battling malnutrition opaque-2 mutant is associated with high lysine and tryptophan content and it has widely used by breeder for development of quality protein maize. Adverse effect of opaque-2 genotypes is further improved by modifier gene and resulted in normal phenotype of maize. Marker assisted selection is one of the novel technologies which could assist in selection of quality protein maize (QPM) genotypes at seedling stage itself and it will advance the development of QPM.

Keywords: Maize, QPM, Nutrition, Genetic improvement, Opaque-2