Current Challenges in Cereal Breeding

Over the last 150 years, plant breeding has delivered increasingly productive cereal varieties. This growth rate is hardly sustainable, as new factors need to be considered and will affect breeding programs. Climate change threatens agricultural production, and crops must be adapted to the new conditions. In addition, the environmental footprint of agriculture must be taken into account in breeding activities. This chapter reviews the current and expected challenges affecting cereal breeding, including increasing productivity, developing resilient cultivars, improving quality, and delivering varieties for a sustainable agriculture. The rich catalog of tools available to speed up and increase the efficiency of cereal breeding are also reviewed: a wider use of natural genetic diversity through planned prebreeding initiatives; high-throughput genotyping and phenotyping methods; genetic modification; and acceleration of breeding cycles by speed breeding or doubled haploid technologies. Developing strategies for the successful alignment of these tools for cereal breeding will ensure its key role in supporting food safety worldwide.