Editorial: Special Issue: Breeding crops for climate resilience

Authors: LANGRIDGE, PETER - University Of Adelaide; BRAUN, HANS - International Maize & Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT); Hulke, Brent; OBER, ERIC - National Institute Of Agricultural Botany (NIAB); PRASANNA, BODDUPALLI - International Maize & Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT)

Submitted to: Theoretical and Applied Genetics
Publication Type: Review Article
Publication Acceptance Date: 5/4/2021
Publication Date: 6/16/2021
Citation: Langridge, P., Braun, H., Hulke, B.S., Ober, E., Prasanna, B.M. 2021. Editorial: Special Issue: Breeding crops for climate resilience. Theoretical and Applied Genetics. 134:1607-1611. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00122-021-03854-7.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00122-021-03854-7

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Recent research has indicated that, despite year-over-year increases in crop productivity, the rate of change in that increase is declining due to climate change. This trend is very concerning to agriculturalists, given the urgency indicated by recent global analyses of climate change and its effects. Our editorial highlights numerous excellent examples of ongoing work to reverse this trend in a variety of crops in many of the global biomes. A common theme throughout these papers is the use of technology to make breeding and selection more efficient (e.g. high-throughput phenotyping, genomic selection, gene editing, use of crop-wild relatives, and integration of climate modelling into predictions). The challenges ahead of us will require further innovation, but many valuable tools already exist with wide use by breeders and related scientific disciplines.