Crop improvement for the remainder of this century should adopt current perspectives and methods to meet changing demands, such as improving yield and quality, along with adapting to increasing environmental stresses due to climate change. Crop wild relatives (CWRs) include a variety of adaptive characteristics that are beneficial to improve stress resilience and maintain food security. Advances in high-throughput phenotyping and omics have accelerated data production and reduced the cost per experiment. This has resulted in large amounts of digital information on morphological, bio-physiological, and molecular diversities in CWRs. However, conservation and use of CWRs in breeding practices are challenging. This chapter focuses on advances in breeding approaches for the exploration and utilization of genes or traits of CWRs for the establishment of climate-smart and highly productive cultivars. Moreover, the opportunities and challenges in the conservation of CWRs, along with their access and benefit-sharing, will be discussed.