Cost-Benefit Analysis of Marker-Assisted Selection in Rosaceous Fruit Crop Breeding Programs

Abstract

Challenges exist in breeding horticultural fruit crops in the Rosaceae family including self-incompatibility, high heterozygosity, and lengthy juvenile phases. Breeders are constantly exploring new methods of overcoming these challenges with marker-assisted selection (MAS) being a prominent example in current programs. MAS has been identified as a method for improving crops by countering some of these challenges. A list of criteria has been developed to gauge the effectiveness of MAS in a program. For MAS to be effective: the trait should be simply inherited, the trait should be expressed in mature plants, and monetary and genetic resources must exist for implementation (Luby and Shaw, 2001). The juvenile phase in some of these crops is lengthy and require multiple years to achieve fruit production. MAS allows the screening of younger plants in the program and earlier removal before considerable labor cost investments. However, breeders have difficulty incorporating MAS and other genetic technologies due to a lack of DNA test availability testing facilities, uncertainties calculating cost of utilization, and a lack of monetary investment (Ru et al., 2015). This research focuses on removing some of these barriers by developing a budget tool to identify cost-efficient DNA-informed breeding applications across three breeding operations in rosaceous breeding programs: apple, peach, and strawberry. The budget tool incorporates aspects of economics (both fixed and variable costs) and plant breeding (breeding records and program details). This tool will allow breeders to more quickly and efficiently judge how implementation of DNA technologies affects costs and benefits to their program.