Loving the Alien: The Contribution of the Wild in Securing the Breeding of Cultivated Hexaploid Wheat and Oats

Abstract

Cereal production is of strategic importance to the world economy. Although the primary aim of breeding programs is to develop cultivars with improved agronomic performance, including high grain yield and grain quality, as well as disease and lodging resistance, nowadays the adaptability to changing environmental conditions seems to be an extremely important feature. The achievement of these breeding objectives in diploid cereal species such as rice, barley, or maize is straightforward. The genetic improvement of polyploid crops such as hexaploid wheat and oats for increased crop production is highly demanding. Progenitor species and wild relatives, including taxa at lower ploidy levels, have preserved a high degree of useful genetic variation. The world’s genebank collections of wheat and oat germplasm provide extremely rich resources for future breeding and utilization. This review highlights the immense potential of cultivated wild relatives as donors of genes for a wide range of biotic and abiotic traits and their impact on wheat and oat breeding. This review covers methods allowing access to these genetic resources, and it highlights the most (and most recently)-exploited related species for gene introgression in wheat and oats. Further, it will also deal with the impact of genomics and cloned genes on the advanced discovery, characterization, and utilization of genetic resources in these two cereals.

Alien introgression to wheat for food security: functional and nutritional quality for novel products under climate change

“…However, novel techniques such as whole genome sequencing and platforms with genetic data, as well as high-throughput phenotyping methodologies and large data set handling opportunities and speed breeding techniques have resulted in novel opportunities for a quicker and more specific transfer of alien genes into adapted wheat lines. Thus, recent advances show good opportunities for quick and precise transfer of alien genes using, e.g., genotyping-by-sequencing both for determination of the gene of interest ( 153 ), for the development of competitive allele-specific PCR (KASP) markers ( 154 , 155 ) and for the selection of adapted wheat material containing the transferred gene ( 39 , 156 ). Thus, the use of these novel technologies will most likely result in increased use of alien germplasm to transfer genes of interest both as related to quality traits (end-use, structure, nutrition) and resistance and yield, thereby targeting food security.…”

Germplasm Resources Exploration and Genetic Breeding of Crops

“…The Special Issue "Germplasm Resources Exploration and Genetic Breeding of Crops" was planned to cover all aspects of the characterization of crop genetic resources and their applications in breeding, as well as genetics research and molecular breeding, including gene/QTL detection or gene functional analysis in crops. In our Special Issue, we have united 16 papers addressing various aspects around the topic of plant genetic resources, including quantitative trait loci (QTL) mapping/gene discovery [2,3], genetic diversity/variation [4][5][6][7][8][9], breeding products [9][10][11][12][13], and genetic resource profiles for crops [14][15][16].…”

“…Three review articles in this Special Issue offer insights into the wealth of genetic resources for wheat/oats [15], chestnuts [16], and tobacco [17]. All three articles point out the significance of these plant materials to breeding for disease resistance and that the potential of the wild relatives can only be fully used when coupled with genomics-assisted breeding.…”

Quality Characteristics of Twelve Advanced Lines of Avena magna ssp. domestica Grown in Three Contrasting Locations in Morocco

“…In fact, the current limited agricultural diversity is very risky and has serious consequences for food security and global biodiversity [22]. The main source of diversity for the improvement of cultivated oats has been the genetic pool residing in oat wild relatives [23]. Many previous studies have attempted to transfer the high protein content of some wild relatives to the cultivated A. sativa, with A. sterilis being the most commonly used.…”