Advances in Genetics and Breeding of Grain Crops

Dear Colleagues,

All the human inhabitants and domesticated animals of our planet depend on grain crops for food and feed. Grain crops are field crops, and are categorized into major cereals (wheat, rice, maize, and rye), minor cereals (barley and oat), small grains (sorghum, teff, and millets), pseudocereals (quinoa and buckwheat), legumes (groundnut, soybean, pea, chickpea, cowpea, bean, lentil and grams), and others (e.g., sesame). These grain crops are used as major carbohydrate sources, protein sources, and edible oils. However, the ongoing changing climate negatively impacts grain crops by reducing the yield and quality attributes. Breeding these crops is a means of sustainable agriculture, in order to produce climate-smart grain with higher productivity and nutritive quality. Grain researchers are attempting to apply various approaches to improve grains, some of which follow: manipulating agronomical practices, assessing the interaction of the crops with multiple environments, breeding strategies involving the incorporation of beneficial traits, utilizing ever losing ancient genetic resources in breeding, high-throughput in-field phenotyping by using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and spectral platforms, finding the responsible genes and their mechanism of action for particular traits of interest, genetic analysis and QTLs for abiotic stress (drought, salinity, heat, cold, heavy metals and UV), tolerance and resistance to various diseases caused by fungal, bacterial and viral pathogens, mutagenesis and gene editing technologies to validate gene functionality, etc. As we are unable to manipulate the climate at the macroscale, scientific research on grain crops, using modern breeding technologies, can delimit the barrier to improve grains for the world's inhabitants.

Dr. Rajib Roychowdhury
Dr. Francisco Fuentes
Guest Editors

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