Biodiversity of Cereal Crops and Utilization in Food and Nutritional Security

As the world’s population increases at an alarming rate, there is a pressing need to boost the supply of food grains. Grains provide about a third of the calories in the average human diet. The diversity of crops is an example of agro-biodiversity that is essential to global food security. Providing a food source, an alternative food source, a gene source for a desirable trait or quality, and allowing breed improvement are just a few of the numerous ways in which crop diversification helps food security. Further, domestication has always been the major way that humans have developed annual grain crops with great yields. However, annual varieties can gain from switching to perenniality, as this solves many of the economic and environmental issues associated with annuality. These issues include soil erosion and wasteful use of soil resources. This is why a lot of research has gone into finding perennial forms of the most typical grain crops. This article primarily examines the domestication and hybridization of the five most productive grains in the world: wheat, rice, maize, rye, and sorghum. Perennial grains have potential benefits for sustainable agriculture around the world, including the mitigation of erosion, the prevention of carbon losses, the lessening of nutrient losses to waters, the enhancement of soil nutrient capture during times of food scarcity, and the reduction of farm costs. In light of this, the purpose of this chapter is to catalog cereal crop biodiversity, evaluate it, and establish a link between it and its use in achieving food and nutritional security.