Physiological, Molecular, and Genetic Perspectives of Wheat Improvement

World population is growing at an alarming rate and may exceed 9.7 billion by 2050, whereas agricultural productivity has been negatively affected due to yield limiting factors such as biotic and abiotic stresses as a result of global climate change. Wheat is a staple crop for ~20% of the world population and its yield needs be augmented correspondingly in order to satisfy the demands of our increasing world population. “Green revolution”, the introduction of semi-dwarf, high yielding wheat varieties along with improved agronomic management practices, gave rise to a substantial increase in wheat production and self-sufficiency in developing countries that include Mexico, India and other south Asian countries. Since the late 1980’s, however, wheat yield is at a standoff with little fluctuation. The current trend is thus insufficient to meet the demands of an increasing world population. Therefore, while conventional breeding has had a great impact on wheat yield, with climatechange becoming a reality, newer molecular breeding and management tools are needed to meet the goal of improving wheat yield for the future. With the advance in our understanding of the wheat genome and more importantly, the role of environmental interactions on productivity, the idea of genomic selection has been proposed to select for multi-genic quantitative traits early in the breeding cycle. Accordingly genomic selection may remodel wheat breeding with gain that is predicted to be 3 to 5 times that of crossbreeding. Phenomics (high-throughput phenotyping) is another fairly recent advancement using contemporary sensors for wheat germplasm screening and as a selection tool. Lastly, CRISPR/Cas9 ribonucleoprotein mediated genome editing technology has been successfully utilized for efficient and specific genome editing of hexaploid bread wheat. In summary, there has been exciting progresses in the development of non-GM wheat plants resistant to biotic and abiotic stress and/or wheatwith improved nutritional quality. We believe it is important to highlight these novel research accomplishments for a broader audience, with the hope that our readers will ultimately adopt these powerful technologies for crops improvement in order to meet the demands of an expanding world population.

Dr. Shabir Hussain Wani is an Assistant professor (Senior scale), genetics and plantbreeding at Mountain Research Centre for Field Crops, Khudwani –192101, Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology of Kashmir, J&K, India. He received Ph.D. degree in plant breeding and genetics on “transgenic rice for abiotic stress tolerance” from the Punjab Agricultural University Ludhiana, India. After obtaining his Ph.D. he worked as research associate in the Biotechnology Laboratory, Central Institute of Temperate Horticulture (ICAR), Srinagar, India. He then joined the Krishi Vigyan Kendra (Farm Science Centre) as program coordinator at Senapati, Manipur, India. He teaches courses related to plant breeding, seed science and technology, and stress breeding and has published more than 100 papers/chapters in journals and books of international and national repute. He served as guest editor and reviews editor for journal Frontier in Plant Science (2015-2018). Hehas also edited several books on current topics in crop improvement for abiotic stress tolerance published by Springer Nature and CRC press USA. His Ph.D. research fetched first prize in the North Zone Competition, at national level, in India. He was awarded Young Scientist Award from the Society for Promotion of Plant Sciences, Jaipur, India, in 2009. He is a fellow of the Society for Plant Research, India. Recently he also received Young Scientist Award (Agriculture) 2015 from Society for Plant Research, Meerut, India. He also served as visiting Scientist at Department of Plant Soil and Microbial Sciences, Michigan State University, USA under the UGC Raman Post Doctoral Fellowship programme. Currently, he is in charge of Wheat improvement programme at MRCFC Khudwani, SKAUST Kashmir.

Dr. Amita Mohan is an Adjunct Assistant Professor, Temple University, and research scientist, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. She previously worked as an Assistant Director in the USAID funded Feed the Future: Climate Resilient Wheat Innovation Lab, Washington State University, Pullman, WA. She is a fellow of Linnean Society of London, UK. She is having more than 15 years of experience in cell and molecular biology, genomics, plant physiology, crop improvement, and breeding and has published more than 25 research articles/chapters in peer-reviewed journals and have one invention disclosure. She has delivered several invited lectures, including Congressional Briefing, Capitol Hill, Washington DC, in 2019. She is serving as a section editor for Cereal Research Communication and editorial board member of JIBS. She is a guest reviewer for several journals, including Nature Scientific Reports, Frontier in Plant Sciences, PLoS ONE, Molecular Breeding, Functional and Integrative Genomics, Plant Molecular Biology Reports, and Plant Breeding. She has conducted two successful training workshops in India, resulting in 4 peer-reviewed journal articles bymasters and graduate students. She served as a judge in several GPSA, WSU organized Research Exposition, and the western section of ASPB. She is the recipient of University merit scholarship (M.Phil) and junior and a senior research fellowship from Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)- University Grants Commission (UGC), Ministry of Human Resource Development, Govt of India. She is a member of several societies like the American Association for University Women, American Association of Plant Biologist, and Crop Science Society of America (CSSA).  

 Dr. Gyanendra Pratap Singh is an accomplished and dedicated agricultural researcher & manager having a rich experience on multiple crops and system perspectivespanning over three decades, my overallcontribution was towards developing 48 wheat & barley varieties benefitting multitude farmers, consumers and industries including the mega varieties like HD 2967 & HD 3086 in wheat which occupies around 15 mha of area of wheat (nearly 50 % of the total area) ;46genetic stocks, developing strategies and policies aimed for agricultural development. Holding the current position of research manager for the national wheat & barley improvement programme, hehas been entrusted with the responsibility of fulfilling the programme objective of ensuring food and nutrition security to all class of people. Within hisleadership role, he has had the opportunity to plan, redefine the programme objectives and activities based on the vision 2050, ground realties and feedback of stakeholders which led the country to reach an all-time highest wheat production. Given the responsibility, a strategy document was developed to double the farmers’ income by 2022 in a system perspective comprising rice-wheat-maize. He has established new research programmes and ethics in R&D, developed work plans to outperform objectives, implemented various training and capacity building programs under the MGMG scheme onthe lines of the Indian Government aiming for skilling and overall development. Having a core understanding across disciplines and department, he has developed a strong and symbiotic relationship with several national and international organisations like DST, DBT, CIMMYT and ACIAR which promotes strong research collaboration and uptake. Leadership skills, research oversight, experience and sustained interest will be my strength which will certainly contribute to the specialised need of your department towards nation building.  He is also recipient of Dr. Rafi Ahmed Kidwai, Dr. BP Pal and, Dr. V S Mathur Memorial Award, BGRI Gene Stewardship Award and Nanaji Deshmuk Outstanding team award, Dr. Amrik Singh Cheema Award, AIASA Agricultural Leadership Award. He is a fellow of National Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Indian Society of Genetics and Plant Breeding, and Society for Advancement of Wheat and Barley Research; and is presently President of   Society of Advancementof Wheat Research. He has guided 4 M. Sc. And 4 Ph. D. students in Indian Agricultural Research Institute. and published 188 research papers in refereed journals. He has also written 6 books on the topics of plant breeding.