Genetics, Genomics, and Biotechnology for Cereal Crop Improvements

Dear Colleagues,

Cereal crops include both major staple food crops (etc. rice, maize, wheat and barley) and minor crops, such as sorghum, millet, pearl millet and teff, which are considered as important sources of dietary fibers, micronutrients and bioactive phyto-compounds. However, several factors have been threatening the global production of cereal crops: (1) world population is increasing, demanding more foods; (2) global climate change is leading to a frequent occurrence of extreme climates, requiring higher environmental adaptability to biotic and abiotic stresses; (3) water resources for the agricultural use are gradually decreasing and the land for superior agricultural production are degrading, putting forward higher yield and water and nutrient use efficiency of crops; (4) the trend of eating nutritious staple foods (such as whole-grain staples) demands the breeding of crop varieties with better quality.

At present, to confront the challenges in crop improvement and to breed cereal crops with higher yield, better environmental adaptability and better quality, molecular genetics, genomics and mutli-omics and biotechnology approaches have been integrated in the up- and down-stream lines of molecular breeding of crops. The major biotechnological tools for cereal crop improvements include (but not limited to) map-based cloning, marker-assisted selection, genomic selection, QTL-mapping, GWAS, transgenic and gene editing technologies, as well as nano-agricultural biotechnologies. As such, we develop this Special Issue to provide a forum with which to address these problems and present new strategies and progress in the improvement of cereal crop species.

Please read the “Special Issue Information" and "Keywords" sections.

Dr. Yin Li
Prof. Dr. Mingjie Chen
Dr. Junli Chang
Guest Editors

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