Introduction: Frontier Technologies for Crop Improvement

The last two decades have witnessed the rapid development and application of several frontier technologies for crop improvement, which have brought speed, precision and cost-effectiveness in making selection decisions for improved breeding lines with better genetics. A few such technologies to be mentioned are accurate and efficient germplasm characterization of diverse genebank accessions, high-throughput sequencing and genotyping, rapid generation advancement, modern sequencing-based trait mapping and gene discovery followed by identification of superior haplotypes, genomic selection, gene editing, forward breeding and multi-omics approaches including better bioinformatics tools/software. While there is still scope for improving phenotyping protocols for various traits, especially the complex ones, the above-mentioned frontier technologies provide huge opportunities in improving the precision and speed in developing new cultivars with future traits to ensure the sustainability of different crop plants. The integration and use of these technologies on a large scale using a common platform to provide flawless support to crop improvement programs is still a challenge for many crop species, but will be accomplished sooner or later.