Genetic Improvement of Cereal Crops for Resistance to Biotic and Abiotic Stresses

Dear Colleagues,

Cereal crops are the major source of raw food material and nutritional components for human consumption and for feed for livestock around the world. Biotic and abiotic stresses are the leading cause of yield loss, decreasing crop productivity by 50%–80% depending on the crop and geographical location. Biotic stresses include insect pests, fungi, bacteria, and viruses. Among abiotic stresses, cold, drought, and salinity are the most studied in cereals. Stress-resistant crops are needed to ensure yield stability under stress conditions and to minimize the environmental impacts of crop production, exacerbated by climate change and application of improper agricultural practices. In the past, most breeding efforts aimed for high crop yields but beneficial alleles that contribute to stress resistance are often lost during conventional breeding because they do not contribute directly to yield. Modern breeding programs aiming at increasing stress resistance returned to traditional landraces and/or wild relatives of the major crops for restoring favorable stress resistance alleles. One difficulty in the breeding of stress resistant cultivars is the complex genetic architecture of stress responses, which is controlled by many quantitative trait loci with a small effect and their complex interactions, and of the variations in the duration, severity, and/or combinations of stresses. Hundreds of genes and QTLs involved in plant stress responses have been identified in cereal crops. Genome sequences are now available for many crops, useful for identifying novel genes or haplotypes responsible for these traits. To provide an overview of genetic improvements to stress responses and how this knowledge can be used in agriculture in modern plant breeding programs, we invite contributions for a Special Issue entitled Genetic Improvement of Cereal Crops for Resistance to Biotic and Abiotic Stresses.

Dr. Grazia Maria Borrelli
Dr. Daniela Marone
Guest Editors

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