Molecular Breeding of Crops: A New Paradigm for Sustainable Agriculture

The United Nations has laid down 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for protecting the planet and encourage prosperity and peace by 2030. In accord of these goals, and India being an emerging global leader is truly committed to achieve these SDGs. The whole biological system depends for their life on agriculture and a shift to sustainable cultivation practices could be a key driver for India to achieve SDGs by 2030. Agriculture being an anthropogenic activity has globally led to pollution, deforestation and overexploitation of natural resources. Hence the development of ‘climate smart’ crops which yield higher per unit resource invested has become a critical factor for adoption of SDGs, especially, SDG 2, which targets ‘zero hunger’. Although, conventional methods of plant breeding have been able to increase crop yields to a great extent, but in recent times, the productivity of a number of leading economically important crops has reached to plateau. It is worthwhile to mention that most of the biotic and abiotic stress-tolerant genes reside in the wild genetic resources of the crop genera. Understanding the complex genetic interactions of the desirable genetic variations that lead to trait expression can provide direct insights for creating climate-resilient, high-yielding varieties. There is an urgent need to fast-track and fine-tune the crop breeding and selection process by adoption of present-day genomics assisted breeding (GAB) methods. In this chapter genomics-assisted acceleration of genetic gains for developing more efficient and climate resilient crop varieties have been discussed.