The rising population entails enhancement in wheat productivity to ensure substantial food supply which often get hindered by various biotic and abiotic stresses. Lodging, due to rain and high velocity wind causes significant economic and yield losses in cereals. Hence, lodging is emerging as a major hurdle to achieve the required yield targets. Various morphological, biochemical, anatomical and genetic traits contribute to produce a plant competent enough to bear lodging stress. Hence, in this review, we intend to elaborate the cause and impact relationship of lodging and tried to link lodging tolerance traits to field practices to minimize the losses. Because of the complex nature of lodging phenomenon, it is still obscure to identify best correlated traits to screen genotype in breeding programmes. However, the genotypes with best correlated traits like plant height, culm wall thickness should be introduced/selected in breeding programmes to inculcate lodging tolerance in a high yielding variety as in recent era lodging tolerance is a key factor to enhance productivity and farmer's income as well.

The rice–wheat cropping system being the backbone of food security in South-Asia has resulted in soil health deterioration, declining water table, and air pollution affecting livability index of the region. The effect of rice residue retention (RRR), irrigation levels and foliar application of K on wheat grain yield (GY), water use efficiency (WUE) and profitability was tested over three years. RRR increased wheat GY (5224 kg ha−1), above-ground biomass (AGBM = 11.9 t ha−1), tillers per square meter (TPM = 469) and grains per meter square (GrPMS = 13,917) significantly. Relative water content (RWC = 93.8) and WUE (2.45 k gm−3) were also increased significantly by RRR. Consequently, profitability (Net return = 624.4 $ and Benefit to cost (B:C) ratio) was enhanced. Foliar application of K enhanced GY (5151 kg ha−1), AGBM (12 t ha−1), RWC (94.1), SPAD (52.2), WUE (2.40 kg m−3), net returns (625.2 $) and BC ratio (1.62) significantly. RRR increased GY (15.66%) and WUE (17.39%) with additional revenue of 151 $ with only one irrigation at the CRI stage (ICS). RRR adopted over 10% of the area can earn 187 million-US$ annually. RRR if adopted over existing practice on a large area would reduce environmental degradation with an enhanced income to small and marginal farmers.

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The deterioration of soil biological health is the most important aspect associated with the sustainability of cereal-based food production systems. The application of organic nutrient sources is widely accepted and recommended for sustaining crop productivity and preserving soil fertility. Therefore, a study was carried out to assess the effects of different levels of farmyard manure (FYM10: 10 t ha−1, FYM20: 20 t ha−1, FYM30: 30 t ha−1), including inorganic fertilizer (NPK) on the soil and the biological properties of five high-yielding wheat cultivars (HD 2967, DPW 621-50, PBW 550, and WH 1105) over a three-year period (2014–2015 to 2016–2017). The results showed that the application of NPK produced significantly higher yields compared to different levels of FYM and the control during all the study years. The continuous addition of a higher rate of FYM at 30 t ha−1 was found to be beneficial in terms of enhancing crop yield gain, thereby bridging the yield gap to only 7.2% in the third year; the gap was 69.1% in the first year with NPK application. The microbial population and microbial biomass carbon were significantly higher in the FYM treatments compared to the NPK treatment. The activities of different soil enzymes were observed to be significantly maximum in the FYM30 treatment. Similarly, the addition of FYM significantly improved the soil respiration and microbial activity over the NPK and control treatments. Based on the principal component analysis, fluorescein diacetate, bacteria, fungi, and actinomycetes were observed as sensitive biological parameters for the assessing of soil biological health. The soil biological index (SBI) determined with the sensitive parameters was in the decreasing order of FYM30 (0.70), FYM20 (0.61), FYM10 (0.55), NPK (0.18), and control (0.15). Considering both the SBI and the sustainability yield index together, the performance of WH 1105 was found to be better compared to the rest of the wheat cultivars. Our results conclude that the application of FYM in the long run increases the crop yield (24.3 to 38.9%) and improves the soil biological process, leading to the improved biological index of the soil.

Drought is one of the major abiotic constraints on wheat yields and also for sustainability of production levels around the world. In the near future, the occurrence likelihood of droughts is predicted to become more common, due to changing climatic conditions, thereby posing a serious threat to the food security system. Heterogeneity, in its time of occurrence and severity levels, is likely to further augment the complexity of drought conditions. Although wheat crop growth has progressively risen to good levels, as evident by notable increases in both area and production, the expected wheat demand for the ever-growing population is quite high. Besides crop yield volatility in the era of climate change and dwindling resources, “trait-based” breeding programs are required, so as to develop high yielding, climate resilient and stable genotypes, at a faster pace. For this to happen, a broad genetic base and wider adaptability to suit varied agro-ecologies would provide enough scope for their quicker spread. The current review places emphasis on making distinct categories of the wheat cultivars/advanced breeding lines, as tolerant, moderately tolerant or susceptible to drought stresses, duly supported by an extensive up-to-date literature base and will be useful for wheat researchers, in order to choose the best potential donors as parents, coupled with the associated traits for the development of drought-tolerant wheat varieties, and also to facilitate molecular studies.