Breeding Climate-Resilient Varieties: Focus on Cereals and Pulses for Future Food Security

Climate change poses a significant threat to global food security, particularly for staple crops like cereals (wheat, rice, maize) and pulses (chickpeas, lentils, beans), which are crucial sources of nutrition for billions of people. Breeding climate-resilient varieties has become a critical focus of agricultural research to address challenges such as drought, heat, salinity, and emerging pest and disease pressures. This chapter of the book provides an overview of various aspects of breeding climate-resilient cereals and pulses with the integration of traditional breeding methods and modern biotechnological approaches, including marker-assisted selection (MAS), genomic selection (GS), gene editing (CRISPR-Cas9), soil microbiome, and speed breeding. Additionally, the topics also cover the role of emerging technologies such as the application of artificial intelligence (AI) in precision breeding, emphasizing their contribution to identifying key genetic traits and predicting crop performance under future climate scenarios. This integrated roadmap aims to enhance food security by 2050 and beyond, with a focus on sustainability and resilience in global agriculture.