Artificial intelligence: Transforming data-driven plant breeding for enhanced efficiency and precision

Climate change, population growth, and limited agricultural resources make the adoption of advanced technologies in plant breeding a necessity. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has recently emerged as a transformative tool, demonstrating significant potential across multiple domains, particularly in plant breeding. As a novel technology, AI has played a pivotal role in enhancing plant breeding programs. Some applications of AI in plant breeding programs include: germplasm management, genomic selection, phenotype evaluation, and AI-assisted omics such as genomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics, and phenomics. The combination of AI and classical plant breeding approaches generates highly reliable data. Despite these advantages, the integration of AI in plant breeding faces several challenges, including model interpretability, the scarcity of structured datasets, and the underdevelopment of robust algorithms. Nevertheless, the integration of AI has led to enhanced accuracy and efficiency in breeding programs. Research findings indicate that AI is not merely a complementary tool to traditional breeding methods, but also serves as the foundation for a new generation of data-driven strategies in crop improvement.

کلیدواژه ها:

Artificial intelligence ، Plant breeding ، Machine learning ، Genomic selection