నైరూప్య

Future of Wheat Breeding is Driven by Hybrid Wheat and Efficient Strategies for Pre-Breeding on Quantitative Traits

C. Friedrich H. Longin

The world wheat production has to be doubled until 2050 to meet the increased demand arising from the continuing population growth, rising meat and dairy consumption, and expanding use of biofuel and biogas. The most sustainable and environmental friendly approach to reach this goal is to increase crop yields per area, but yield growths in wheat are stagnating in many parts of the world. Hybrid breeding has been proposed as a potential strategy to boost yields in selfing species and to enhance yield stability. Wheat hybrids are currently cultivated on only <1% of the global acreage but large research efforts have been launched to increase this acreage.