Wheat is a key economically important cereal crop that is consumed globally. While the grain yield increase is steady at around 1%, it is not enough to meet the growing global demands of the next decades. One the major factor that affects wheat production is the uncertainty in climatic patterns. High temperature, drought, frost, and salinity are some of the abiotic stresses known to affect wheat production significantly. Developing wheat varieties with stable and high grain yield is the crucial for sustainable wheat production. Though, diversity for tolerance to abiotic stress exists within the wheat gene pools and elite germplasms, there is a need to rapidly introgress and breed for stress adapted lines. Optimization of the breeding process, through use of effective screening technologies, faster generation advance, and recycling of parents could impact the varietal development process significantly. The advances in genomic technologies, such as better and cheaper molecular markers and improved prediction models for genomic selection could further contribute to breeding for stress tolerant germplasm. Opportunities exists to increase the grain yield trends under abiotic stresses, which need to be effectively and efficiently utilized.

Wheat CRP FP2 - Novel diversity and tools adapt to climate change and resource constraints

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