Wheat Breeding, Genetics and Genomics

Dear Colleagues,

Wheat breeding has kept pace with population growth during last 50 years. Yielding only about 1.5 ton/ha in 1970 when the world’s population stood at about 3.7 billion, wheat yield increase has grown by over 130% to 3.5 t/ha, outpacing the 106% population increase. However, an even greater rate of yield gain needs to be maintained to produce enough wheat for about 10 billion people by 2050. Wheat breeding does not only have to sustain the current yield gains but strive for yield breakthrough amid the threats posed by biotic and abiotic stresses along with climatic change. Recent advances in sequencing technologies have brought a remarkable transformation in the marker tool kit of wheat, resulting in the availability of millions of SNPs and presence–absence variations. Simultaneous advances in genomics technologies have led to an abundance of transcriptome data showing expressional variation in different tissues of wheat and in multiple germplasm sets. Individual genes and alleles can allow us to design ideotypes and breeding programs through optimized deployment of variation at known loci. In addition, efforts are required to devise a genome-based strategy to deploy favorable introgressions from synthetic and wild landraces wheats to enhance breeding value. The Special Issue proposes to identify wheat genetics and breeding imperatives to achieve the above identified goals.

Dr. Deepmala Sehgal
Dr. Rajiv Sharma
Dr. Uttam Kumar
Guest Editors

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• wheat reference genome
• pangenome
• GWAS
• genomic selection
• CRISPR
• gene introgression/modification
• climate change
• biotic stresses
• yield gain
• wheat breeding