New breeding technologies for cereals

Abstract

This issue of Cereal Chemistry is special because it marks the beginning of a new and exciting publishing partnership with Wiley. More specifically, the first part of the issue features a series of papers focused on new breeding technologies for cereals. Cereal grains are the foundation of the human food supply and an important source of raw materials for industry. Application of new breeding technologies will be a major driver of future growth in productivity and profitability in the grains industries, and will lead to the development of new health-promoting grain products. I congratulate the guest editorial team for assembling an excellent set of thought-provoking papers. I commend this focus issue to you, with the hope that it will help to stimulate new research in grain science. Farmers have been using genetic selection on crops since the concept of farming was established. One of the most extreme examples is modern-day corn, which is derived from the weed teosinte. There has been an explosion of breeding expertise in the last century, and plant breeders are now able to generate thousands of hybrids and then phenotypically select for the ones with desirable traits, thus condensing what used to take millennia into just a few years. More recently, scientists have begun using marker-assisted breeding to narrow down selections using biomarkers associated with the desired phenotype. For the last decade, new breeding technologies have emerged as a growing field of research for their applications in developing new agricultural products. They focus on precise modification of the genome, also known as gene editing, which in turn is able to achieve the desired trait in a quicker and simpler way. These edits can be achieved via several means; the use of meganucleases, for example, to edit the genome and insert desirable traits in precise genomic loci has already been proven effective in crops. Other technologies involving CRISPR/cas9 systems and their variations are rapidly being developed. On the other hand, scientists have made great progress in understanding the genomes of complex cereals such as wheat. Thus, in this crossroad of explosion of scientific advancement, the science and the knowhow could be used to develop new varieties of cereals with critical traits that have currently been unavailable. Developing products with such desirable traits is still a challenging task, especially when questions still remain about the current state of market regulations. Global regulatory authorities are currently working to establish processes that will allow the launch of products developed using new breeding tools. Thus, it is timely that we use our first issue of the year to focus on new breeding technologies, their potential use in the context of cereal development, and the future of such products within the marketplace.