Germplasm Evaluation and Breeding of Cereals under a Changing Environment

Dear Colleagues,

Cereals are the most important source of energy for feeding humans and livestock worldwide. The most commonly grown cereals are maize, wheat, rice, barley, sorghum, oats and rye, with maize, wheat and rice together accounting for more than three quarters of the total grain production worldwide. To meet the caloric needs of the growing population, the production of cereals with desirable processing and nutritional quality must be continuously increased, and plant breeding is the most promising strategy to achieve this goal. However, with climate change leading to an increased incidence of biotic and abiotic stresses, which affects both yield and quality, breeding new cultivars with improved traits that are stable across a range of environments is a challenge. An important goal in the development of new cereal cultivars is therefore to increase their resistance to biotic stresses caused by various diseases and pests, as well as to abiotic stresses such as drought, extreme temperatures, salinity, soil nutrient deficiencies, etc. The implementation of new methods of high-throughput phenotyping and molecular marker technology in the form of QTL mapping, genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and molecular breeding (marker-assisted selection, marker-assisted backcrossing, marker-assisted recurrent selection and genomic selection) into existing cereal breeding programs can accelerate the breeding process and increase the response to selection.

This Special Issue of the journal Agronomy will focus on all aspects of cereal breeding for improved grain yield and quality. Welcome topics include, but are not limited to, the evaluation of germplasm for yield and quality traits under stress and non-stress conditions in the field and in the laboratory, QTL mapping, GWAS and molecular breeding.

Prof. Dr. Hrvoje Šarčević
Guest Editor

Dr. Miroslav Bukan
Guest Editor Assistant

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• cereals
• grain yield
• end-use quality
• nutritional quality
• biotic stresses
• abiotic stresses
• germplasm evaluation
• high-throughput phenotyping
• molecular markers
• QTL mapping
• GWAS
• molecular breeding