Wheat Crop Improvement (by Transgenic and Conventional Breeding Methods)

Dear Colleagues,

Bread wheat (Triticum aestivum), one of the big three globally important crops, accounts for 20% of the calories consumed by humans. Of the world’s 7.8 billion people, 35% depend on this staple crop for survival. Currently, the world production of wheat is 734.74 million tons, making it the third most-produced cereal after maize (1.02 billion tons) and rice (740.9 million tons). The importance of wheat culturally as well as commercially is evident from the range of food items and other commodities it produces. Wheat grain is used to make flour for leavened, flat, and steamed breads; biscuits; cookies; cakes,; breakfast cereal; pasta; noodles; couscous; and for fermentation to make beer and other alcoholic beverages or biofuel. With only 11% (13.4 billion ha) of the globe’s land surface dedicated to crop production, there is a continuous demand for maintaining food supplies and feeding an ever-growing world population, which is growing exponentially. Therefore, improving both the yields and quality of wheat produced globally is more important than ever. Advances in sequencing technology over the past 10 years have not only provided invaluable insights into the wheat genome but have also allowed a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying important agronomic traits and how they can be improved. Ancient cultivars carrying important traits such as disease and pest resistance have also helped to improve wheat quality. Use of transgenics or genome editing technologies in understanding gene functionality still plays a crucial role in wheat crop improvement and should always complement conventional breeding methods. I hope that this Special Issue will not only reflect the many aspects of research that are continuing our mission to improve wheat quality but also celebrate the many multi-faceted approaches to achieving this ultimate goal.

Dr. Mark D. Wilkinson
Dr. Ondrej Kosik
Guest Editors

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