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Climate change has negatively impacted lentil growth and production, necessitating advanced omics tools for trait characterization and genetic improvement. Traditional breeding methods have reached their limits, making high-throughput omics technologies, biotechnology, and bioinformatics essential. Despite their benefits, efforts targeting lentils have been limited. Genomics and transcriptomics studies have identified linkage maps, quantitative-trait loci (QTLs), and stress tolerance genes. The use of phenotyping techniques has expanded, but lentil has not yet made full use of these state-of-the-art procedures under stress conditions. Lentil proteomics has used 2-D gel electrophoresis to discover seed-specific proteomes, but lacks research on stress impacts. Lentil ionomics has involved the analysis of elemental composition and the examination of changes in response to various stresses. Metabolomics has revealed key stress-related pathways and genes. The review suggests integrating omics discoveries into a systems approach to enhance lentil productivity and resilience.

This study aims to evaluate the role of genetic diversity originated from three-way crosses of landraces and synthetic bread wheat derivatives attempted with elite cultivars to identify the genotypes having better grain yield as well as better starch contents under flowering stage drought stress. In total, 50 genotypes comprised of 47 derivatives of landraces and synthetics, and three standard varieties were grown in the fields of CIMMYT, Obregon following alpha lattice design with two replications. Drought stress was imposed by stopping the irrigation before anthesis and post-anthesis stages. Different traits related to physiological adaptations, earliness, grain yield and starch contents were decreased under drought stress except amylose which increased significantly. Canopy temperature depression was not significantly affected by drought stress. Further, we identified strong correlation of grain yield with plant height, normalized difference in vegetation index, plant maturity, spike length, grain number and thousand grain weight but negative with canopy temperature depression. Non-significant correlation of amylose and amylopectin was recorded with grain yield. Results revealed that genetic diversity derived from landraces and synthetic bread wheat can improve grain yield and starch contents but simultaneous improvement of both is elusive.

One of the several impediments to increasing wheat productivity challenge is the low genetic diversity in modern wheat. Successful breeding requires the identification of donor germplasm in genetically diverse pools highlighting the importance of selection and use of diverse genotypes in a breeding program. In this investigation, we attempted to characterize a set of Mexican wheat landraces for drought and salt stress under controlled conditions at seedling stage to identify the drought and salt-tolerant genotypes. Drought stress at 14% PEG and saline stress at 125 mM NaCl caused significant reduction in all the traits investigated, i.e., germination %, root and shoot length, root and shoot fresh weight and vigor index. Association analyses revealed a total of 71 significantly associated SNPs with different traits. In addition, the cluster analysis of the germplasm for drought and salt stress identified three sub-groups based on the first two principal components which explained 51.5% and 44.3% variation, respectively. The best accessions under drought stress were number 13, 70, 71, 83, 85, 86, 87, 129, 141 and 142 carrying 8–22 positive alleles from a total possible of 24 positive alleles of the associated SNPs. Moreover, accessions 71 and 83 were carrying 22 positive alleles in total. This group also showed a mean increase of 22.54% in all the traits as compared to the population mean. Likewise, the ten best performed accessions under salt stress were 13, 14, 20, 26, 34, 35, 128, 130, 132 and 139 that carried from 17 to 28 from a possible of 35 alleles where accession number 20 carried maximum 28 favorable alleles. The phenotypic performance of these accessions indicated a mean increase of 16.43% from the population mean. Realizing the potential of these accessions, they can be included in future breeding programs to breed drought and salt stress-tolerant cultivars.

Plant genetic resources are stored and regenerated in > 1750 gene banks storing > 7,000,000 accessions. Since seeds are the primary storage units, research on seed longevity is of particular importance. Quantitative trait loci (QTL) analysis of 15 traits related to seed longevity and dormancy using 7584 high-quality SNPs recorded across 2 years and originated from five production years revealed a total of 46 additive QTLs. Exploration of the QTLs with epistatic effect resulted in the detection of 29 pairs of epistatic QTLs. To our information, this is only the second report of epistatic QTLs for seed longevity in bread wheat. We conclude that in addition to dense genetic maps, the epistatic interaction between loci should be considered to capture more variation which remained unnoticed in additive mapping.

The rise in human population necessitates the use of all available tools to enhance wheat productivity. In this regard, pre-breeding has mobilized novel underutilized genetic variation into breeding programs. However, this germplasm needs to be characterized for its efficient utilization. This investigation was initiated to evaluate the early and late sown wheat pre-breeding germplasm for physiology- and yield-related traits and to associate the mapped SNPs using association mapping approach. Our results indicate that the germplasm performed better in early sowing in comparison to late planting where grain yield (Yd) was found positively correlated with water use efficiency (WUE), heading time, and chlorophyll contents (Chl). We discovered a total of 210 associations involving 155 SNPs. Taking into consideration either early or late sowing and the mean values, only 12 marker traits were associated with trait germination, plant height, stomatal conductance, transpiration rate, Chl, carotenoids, and Yd. Our correlations and mapping results indicate that higher WUE along with Chl can be targeted as indirect physiological markers to enhance wheat yield.