The current and future trends in population growth and consumption continue to increase the demand for wheat, a key cereal for global food security. Wheat products are an important source of essential macro- and micronutrients in human diet. About two billion people are deficient in some essential micronutrients including zinc (Zn) and iron (Fe); the magnitude is particularly severe among children, pregnant, and lactating women. Wheat is the second largest produced cereal in India with over 107 million tons during 2020–21 season. It is a primary food staple consumed in India, although consumption varies widely by state or region. Therefore, biofortified wheat is potentially an ideal vehicle for delivering increased quantities of Zn/Fe to young children and their mothers in those states where wheat is a primary staple. The conventional breeding strategies have been successful in introduction of novel alleles for grain Zn that led to release of competitive Zn-enriched wheat varieties in South Asia. The major challenge over the next few decades will be to maintain the rates of genetic gains for grain yield along with increased grain Zn concentration to meet the food and nutritional security challenges. Therefore, to remain competitive, the performance of Zn-enhanced lines/varieties must be equal or superior to that of current non-biofortified elite lines/varieties. Since both yield and Zn content are invisible and quantitatively inherited traits except few intermediate effect QTL regions identified for grain Zn, increased breeding efforts and new approaches are being optimized to combine them at high frequency in CIMMYT’s elite germplasm, ensuring that Zn levels are steadily increased to the required levels across the CIMMYT wheat germplasm. The addition of Zn as a core trait requires a significant acceleration in the breeding cycle, expanding population sizes, extensive phenotyping for Zn, yield testing, phenotyping for biotic and abiotic stresses, genotyping, molecular-assisted selection, and genomic selection. While continuing to increase agronomic performance and stress tolerance of new wheat lines, the Zn and Fe content will also be increased in higher frequency with potential to be released as competitive biofortified varieties by partners across target countries.

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