Wheat Breeding

Abstract

Wheat (Triticum spp.) is a major staple rabi cereal contributing about 20% calories to the human diet and important cereal for ensuring food and nutritional security in many parts of the world. Burgeoning population and diversification of food habits involving more of wheat-based products have increased the demand for wheat. Therefore, integration of modern crop tools with conventional approaches is necessary to develop the future genotypes that not only will be climate resilient and input responsive but also have higher yield per unit time and space so as to meet the growing demand. It deals with the wheat crop in a holistic manner focussing on a wide range of topics including origin, evolution, taxonomy, genetics, breeding, quality, stresses, high throughput phenotyping, genomic selection, genome editing, speed breeding and new plant breeding techniques (NPBT). This chapter also covers Indian approaches of wheat varietal development and testing under co-ordinated system as a case study, and thus would be a valuable reading material for students, researchers, academicians and policy makers.KeywordsWheatGeneticsQualityStressesGenome editingNew breeding techniques