Exploring Resilient Crop Species to Understand the Genetic Basis of Stress Adaptation

Dear Colleagues,

Agriculture is one of the most climate-sensitive components of modern society. Increasing temperatures, more prevalent extreme weather events, and the emergence of new pathogens and diseases—all direct consequences of climate change—are putting extra pressure on food security. To address the challenges posed by this increase in abiotic and biotic pressures, farmers, breeders, and plant scientists around the world need concerted efforts to improve crop resilience and ensure food security.

Historically, breeding programs have favored yield-related traits under optimal conditions, leading to increased stress vulnerability. In addition, much of the research in stress tolerance has focused on model species such as Arabidopsis thaliana or Oryza sativa (rice). However, such species are not stress-resilient. Thus, recent efforts have sought to identify new sources of resilience to understand the genetic basis of stress tolerance and improve crop productivity in the context of climate change.

Resilient crop species can be found among understudied orphan crops and relatives of cultivated crops. These species offer great potential for food security and often include large collections of underutilized germplasm resources. In recent years, the advent of cost-effective and automated genotyping and phenotyping technologies has accelerated the research into orphan and/or underutilized crops. The use of these technologies in the exploration of genetic and phenotypic diversity within resilient species is beginning to reveal the mechanisms of stress adaptation and has the potential to enhance food production in the face of global climate change.

This Special Issue aims to report major research advances in the exploration of resilient species to understand the genetic basis of stress adaptation. We invite contributions (original research papers, perspectives, hypotheses, opinions, reviews, modeling approaches, and methods) from researchers targeting resilient species and underutilized crops to improve stress responses, including biotic and abiotic stresses. Articles in basic and applied research, focusing on either reverse or forward genetics approaches that address the above-mentioned challenges for this topic and guided by the keywords supplied, are welcome.

Dr. Sonia Negrao
Dr. David Jarvis
Guest Editors

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• resilient crop species
• underutilized crops
• wild relatives
• breeding
• genomics
• climate change
• abiotic stress
• biotic stress