Recent Advancements in Breeding and Genomics of Red Clover

The red clover (Trifolium pratense L.) is a flowering herbaceous plant that belongs to the Fabaceae family. Native of these plants are Europe, Western Asia, and North West Africa. It is a short-lived perennial plant. It is grown as fodder and cover crops. This plant has many applications in agricultural, food, and medical fields. In agriculture it is valued for its nitrogen fixation ability, improves soil fertility, and serves as a weed suppressor. The flowers of this plant are used to make jelly and tisanes. Red clover has anti-inflammatory and anti-dermatosis properties. It contains a chemical product called isoflavones, which can be used in the treatment of menopause, whooping cough, cancer, arthritis, and asthma. The aim of breeding red clover is high yield as it has many applications in various fields, improving persistence, resistance to pests and diseases on crops, resistance to biotic and abiotic factors, and for its quality characteristics such as protein quality and stability. The key step in crop breeding is selection and conventional breeding is based on phenotypic selection. Genome selection is a new breeding method where a large number of DNA markers are used to predict the genetic value of an individual or population. It helps to identify better properties such as harvest yield, protein quality, persistence, and disease resistance of the plant. Genomics also helps to improve crop breeding. Genomics focuses on the structure, function, mapping, and editing of the genome. Nowadays many new technologies are used for genomic analysis of plants. New generation sequencing is used for sequencing the red clover genome and assembly of the genome is done by using the de novo assembly method. The structure of the genome is identified using fluorescence in situ hybridization and DNA markers are used for comparison of the genome with other model plant genomes. This new technology helps to improve the plant varieties and provides a better understanding of the plants.