One of the most chronic constraints to crop production is the grain yield reduction near the crop harvest stage by lodging worldwide. This is more prevalent in cereal crops, particularly in wheat and rice. Major factors associated with lodging involve morphological and anatomical traits along with the chemical composition of the stem. These traits have built up the remarkable relationship in wheat and rice genotypes either prone to lodging or displaying lodging resistance. In this review, we have made a comparison of our conceptual perceptions with foregoing published reports and proposed the fundamental controlling techniques that could be practiced to control the devastating effects of lodging stress. The management of lodging stress is, however, reliant on chemical, agronomical, and genetic factors that are reducing the risk of lodging threat in wheat and rice. But, still, there are many questions remain to be answered to elucidate the complex lodging phenomenon, so agronomists, breeders, physiologists, and molecular biologists require further investigation to address this challenging problem.

Fusarium head blight (FHB), a devastating disease that affects wheat, is caused by a complex of Fusarium species. The overall impact of Fusarium spp. in wheat production arises through the combination of FHB and mycotoxin infection of the grain harvested from infected wheat spikes. Spike infection occurs during opening of flowers and is favoured by high humidity or wet weather accompanied with warm temperatures. Available possibilities for controlling FHB include the use of cultural practices, fungicides and biological approaches. Three cultural practices are expected to be of prime importance in controlling FHB and the production of mycotoxins: soil preparation method (deep tillage), the choice of the preceding crop in the rotation and the selection of appropriate cultivar.

Heat stress is one of the major threats to wheat production in many wheat-growing areas of the world as it causes severe yield loss at the reproductive stage. In the current study, 28 crosses were developed using 11 parental lines, including 7 female lines and 4 male testers following line × tester matting design in 2018–2019. Twenty-eight crosses along with their 11 parental lines were sown in a randomized complete block design in triplicate under optimal and heat stress conditions. Fifteen different morpho-physiological and grain quality parameters were recorded at different growth stages. Analysis of variance illustrated the presence of highly significant differences among wheat genotypes for all traits under both optimal and heat stress conditions. The results of combining ability unveiled the predominant role of non-additive gene action in the inheritance of almost all the studied traits under both conditions. Among parents, 3 parental lines WL-27, WT-39, and WL-57 showed good combining ability under both normal and heat stress conditions. Among crosses, WL-8 × WT-17, WL-37 × WT-17, WL-7 × WT-39, and WL-37 × WT-39 portrayed the highest specific combining ability effects for grain yield and its related traits under optimal as well as heat stress conditions. Biplot and cluster analysis confirmed the results of general and specific combining ability by showing that these wheat crosses belonged to a highly productive and heat tolerant cluster. Correlation analysis revealed a significantly positive correlation of grain yield with net photosynthetic rate, thousand-grain rate, and the number of grains per spike. The designated parental lines and their crosses were selected for future breeding programs in the development of heat resilient, climate-smart wheat genotypes.

The allelic variations of Vp-1B have been confirmed to have close association with seed dormancy (SD) and pre-harvest sprouting (PHS) of Chinese wheat in previous research, but little was known regarding whether the alleles of two other orthologs of Vp1 on 3AL (Vp-1A) and 3DL (Vp-1D) are also present and related to these traits. In view of this, 11 primer pairs flanking the whole sequences of these two orthologs were designed to investigate their allelic variations. The results identified six alleles of Vp-1A using the primer pair A17-19 among 81 wheat cultivars and advanced lines, which were designated as Vp-1Aa, Vp-1Ab, Vp-1Ac, Vp-1Ad, Vp-1Ae, and Vp-1Af. Except for Vp-1Ac, the other five alleles were proven novel, but no allelic variation was found in Vp-1D. On sequence analysis of alleles of Vp-1A, five deletions were observed, all occurring in the same region holding many TTC repeats. Of the six alleles detected in this study, four (Vp-1Aa, Vp-1Ac, Vp-1Ae, and Vp-1Af) were generally distributed in varieties exhibiting higher average germination index (GI, range 0.46-0.56) and spike sprouting (SS, range 39.6-49.4%); however, the alleles Vp-1Ab and Vp1Ad were distributed in genotypes carrying higher SD (GI 0.19-0.26) and stronger PHS resistance (SS 12.3-17.2%). On Spearman correlation analysis, the allele Vp-1Ab had significantly negative correlation with GI (-0.479) and SS (-0.542) at the 0.01 level, and the three alleles Vp-1Aa, Vp-1Ac, and Vp-1Ae had significantly positive correlation with GI [0.311 (0.05 level), 0.401 (0.01 level), and 0.294 (0.05 level)] and SS [0.283 (0.05 level), 0.309 (0.05 level), and 0.266 (0.05 level)]. The other alleles, includingVp-1Ad and Vp-1Af, also exhibited correlation, albeit not significant, with these two traits. This negative correlation showed that Vp-1Ab helped to improve SD and PHS tolerance, but Vp-1Aa, Vp-1Ac, and Vp1Ae appeared to exert the opposite effect. To further confirm the association between alleles of Vp-1A and the two traits, a recombinant inbred line (RIL) population with 157 lines was genotyped using the primer pair A17-19, developed from the cross between Wanxianbaimaizi (Vp-1Ab) and Jing411 (Vp-1Ac). General linear model analysis indicated that variation in Vp-1A had a significant (P \ 0.001) association with the two traits, explaining 23.4% of the variation in GI and 16.7% of the variation in SS in the population across three crop seasons.