Current status and development trend of cassava breeding

<p indent="0mm">Cassava, which originates from tropical America, serves as a staple food for nearly one billion people globally. However, the cassava genome is highly heterozygous, which leads to significant offspring segregation, difficulties in targeted breeding, and an extended breeding cycle. These factors in turn seriously restrict the development of cassava industry. Therefore, it is urgent to shorten the breeding cycle and create excellent accessions for cassava breeders. In recent years, with the development of sequencing technology and the applications of multi-omics, gene editing, and genetic transformation, huge breakthroughs have been made in cassava breeding. From the global perspective, we discussed the recent progresses in cassava breeding, including the changes in the evaluation of important agronomic traits in cassava germplasm resources from traditional phenotypic evaluation to accurate evaluation of phenotype and genotype, the assembly &amp; annotation of cassava reference genomes and the discovery of elite genes with key traits, and the development trend of cassava breeding from traditional to modern breeding. We also discussed the future directions for cassava breeding, which is of great significance for promoting the cassava industry, serving the National “Belt and Road” initiative, and resolving the issues of food security and effective supply of feed in tropical regions worldwide.