The molecular marker-assisted breeding is one of the important methods to cultivate excellent germplasms of Chinese medicinal materials by combining modern molecular biology with traditional genetic breeding. The main target of breeding is to make the biological characters of Chinese medicinal materials stable and the yield and medicinal component of it controllable, and ensure that the medicinal materials produced have the characteristics of "excellent shape, high quality and high effect". Compared with traditional breeding that prefers to the selection of phenotypic traits, the molecular marker-assisted breeding also emphasizes genotype screening. It mainly includes five fields, namely the construction of genetic linkage maps, the positioning of quantitative trait locus(QTL), the analysis of genetic diversities, the identification of varieties and hybrid germplasm purity, and the application of molecular marker-assisted selection. At present, SCoT, ISSR, SSR and SNP are the main DNA markers used in the studies of marker-assisted breeding of Chinese medicinal materials. With the rapid development of high-throughput sequencing technology, genome-wide association(GWAS) and molecular design breeding will become the hotspots of Chinese medicinal materials breeding in the future. In this paper, we review current studies excellent germplasm selection of Chinese medicinal materials using molecular marker-assisted breeding and future development prospects. It is suggested to accelerate the breeding of traditional Chinese medicinal materials using molecular pharmacognosy theory and methods, in order to provide theoretical guidance for breeding, protection and sustainable utilization of traditional Chinese medicinal materials.
Keywords: Chinese medicinal materials; genome-wide association study(GWAS); molecular design breeding; molecular marker-assisted breeding.