Plant Functional Genomics and Crop Genetic Improvement

Dear Colleagues,

Global climate changes and rapidly increasing population have been making sustainable supplies of food and energy unprecedented challenging. Accordingly, superior traits are becoming urgely demanded for crops, such as better yield, abiotic and biotic stress tolerance, better water and nitrogen use efficiency and better food processing and nutritional qualities. Cereal crops have been domesticated and bred as the staple food for global population for hundreds to thousands of years. Major cereal crops, including maize, wheat, rice, barley and sorghum, have definitely made significant contributions on food, nutrition and even energy supplies for our world. Recently, blooming of the omics technologies (including genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics and epigenomics), their increasing accessibility and decreasing costs enable the applications of omics technologies in plant sciences, and hence expand our knowledge in both model and non-model plant species. Combination of molecular genetic approaches and omics technologies lead to rapid development in the fields of functional genomics, which have helped to unveil the functions of different types genetic components (such as genes, regulatory elements and non-coding RNAs), and laid solid foundations for crop genetic improvement. As the Topic Editors of this Topic Collection “Functional Genomics and Genetic Improvement of Major Cereal Crops”, we are anticipating submissions from the many researchers working within the wide spectrum of research on the major cereal crops. Examples of topics of interest for this Topic Collection include:

• Functional genomic and genetic improvement studies related to yieldof major cereal crops;
• Functional genomic and genetic improvement studies related to crop development and physiology;
• Functional genomic and genetic improvement studies related to abiotic and biotic stress tolerance in major cereal crops;
• Functional genomic and genetic improvement studies related to food and nutritional qualities of major cereal crops;
• Functional genomic and genetic improvement studies related to water or nitrogen use efficiency in major cereal crops.

Dr. Yin Li
Prof. Dr. Guangxiao Yang
Prof. Dr. Yongfang Wan
Prof. Dr. Jian Zeng
Dr. Yaqiong Wang
Topic Editors