Call for articles – Modern plant breeding for achieving global food security

Food and Agriculture Organization has estimated that the global human population will reach approximately 9 billion by 2050. The world farming system must produce 50% more food than the current production to meet growing food demands. Plant breeding-based technologies have contributed significantly to hunger reduction during the last few decades. However, the global food requirements can’t be met through conventional breeding methods. The recent crop improvement efforts are targeting novel plant breeding approaches based on OMICs technologies (i.e., phenomics, proteomics, genomics, and transcriptomics, etc.) along with genome editing for important traits. The OMICs-based high-throughput approaches provide vast information on genes, proteins and metabolites, elucidating metabolic and biological systems’ response to various biotic and abiotic stresses. It has facilitated the engineering of new crops for sustainable agriculture and food security. Furthermore, the screening of large germplasm pools for identifying novel alleles can be accelerated with OMICs-based technologies, ultimately enhancing the availability of variation for breeding. In addition to OMICs, the targeted-genome editing CRISPR/Cas9 system has provided a flexible, precise and efficient tool for editing genes of interest. This technique is surprising and proves itself to be a game-changer in plant engineering. The CRISPR system has been successfully employed in several agricultural-important crops (e.g., Oryza sativa, Zea mays, Triticum aestivum, Solanum tuberosum, etc.) for improving yield, quality, biotic and abiotic stress resistance, and climate-resilient crops thanks to the precise prediction of causal genes and metabolic by OMICs-based approaches.

In this special issue, we welcome original research, comprehensive and minireviews, technical focus, short communications, and viewpoints highlighting the role of modern plant breeding approaches for developing novel traits in crop plants essential for ensuring food security in the following research areas but not limited to:

• Marker-assisted selection and its application for crop improvement.
• Precision breeding through Omics and genome editing.
• Designing future crops through genomics-based approaches.
• Physiologic, genomic and transcriptomic strategies involved in crop adaptation under climate change conditions.
• Intervention of multi-omics and bioinformatic approaches for developing climate-resilient crops.
• Recent trends and applications of omics-based knowledge to end global food hunger.
• The utilization of QTL mapping and genome editing technologies for crop yield and quality improvement.
• Crosstalk between classical and modern plant breeding approaches for achieving zero hunger.

Deadline: end of March 2024

Good to know:
-no publication fee and free to view for two months (from Issue compilation)
-if you want to write a review: send an abstract proposal to Qingyu Wu before December 2d. 

 

Guest Editors