Using weedy traits in crops as part of a new green revolution

Crop production faces major challenges, including climate change, biodiversity loss, and global food insecurity, with the need to produce more food under increasingly difficult climatic conditions without negatively impacting ecosystems. Weeds are plants that have adapted to cropping systems despite intensive management efforts over centuries. We propose that weeds possess novel and useful sources of genetic variation that can be used to improve crops for abiotic and biotic stress tolerance. We discuss the potential advantages and disadvantages associated with this approach and outline the interdisciplinary research that will be necessary to successfully identify and utilize this genetic diversity to improve crops. Although the concept of utilizing weedy traits in crops has been put forward previously, recent advances in weed genomics resources, bioinformatics tools to identify the genetic basis of adaptive traits, and genome editing methods now combine to make this approach more feasible.