The narrow genetic base of cultivars coupled with low utilization of genetic resources are the major factors limiting grain legume production and productivity globally. Exploitation of new and diverse sources of variation is needed for the genetic enhancement of grain legumes. Wild relatives with enhanced levels of resistance/tolerance to multiple stresses provide important sources of genetic diversity for crop improvement. However, their exploitation for cultivar improvement is limited by cross-incompatibility barriers and linkage drags. Pre-breeding provides a unique opportunity, through the introgression of desirable genes from wild germplasm into genetic backgrounds readily used by the breeders with minimum linkage drag, to overcome this. Pre-breeding activities using promising landraces, wild relatives, and popular cultivars have been initiated at International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) to develop new gene pools in chickpea, pigeonpea, and groundnut with a high frequency of useful genes, wider adaptability, and a broad genetic base. The availability of molecular markers will greatly assist in reducing linkage drags and increasing the efficiency of introgression in pre-breeding programs.

Wheat (Triticum sp.) is one of the world’s most important crops, and constantly increasing its productivity is crucial to the livelihoods of millions of people. However, more than a century of intensive breeding and selection processes have eroded genetic diversity in the elite genepool, making new genetic gains difficult. Therefore, the need to introduce novel genetic diversity into modern wheat has become increasingly important. This review provides an overview of the plant genetic resources (PGR) available for wheat. We describe the most important taxonomic and phylogenetic relationships of these PGR to guide their use in wheat breeding. In addition, we present the status of the use of some of these resources in wheat breeding programs. We propose several introgression schemes that allow the transfer of qualitative and quantitative alleles from PGR into elite germplasm. With this in mind, we propose the use of a stage-gate approach to align the pre-breeding with main breeding programs to meet the needs of breeders, farmers, and end-users. Overall, this review provides a clear starting point to guide the introgression of useful alleles over the next decade.

Wheat occupies a special role in global food security since, in addition to providing 20% of our carbohydrates and protein, almost 25% of the global production is traded internationally. The importance of wheat for food security was recognised by the Chief Agricultural Scientists of the G20 group of countries when they endorsed the establishment of the Wheat Initiative in 2011. The Wheat Initiative was tasked with supporting the wheat research community by facilitating collaboration, information and resource sharing and helping to build the capacity to address challenges facing production in an increasingly variable environment. Many countries invest in wheat research. Innovations in wheat breeding and agronomy have delivered enormous gains over the past few decades, with the average global yield increasing from just over 1 tonne per hectare in the early 1960s to around 3.5 tonnes in the past decade. These gains are threatened by climate change, the rapidly rising financial and environmental costs of fertilizer, and pesticides, combined with declines in water availability for irrigation in many regions. The international wheat research community has worked to identify major opportunities to help ensure that global wheat production can meet demand. The outcomes of these discussions are presented in this paper.

Like many other major crops, ICRISAT's mandate grain legume crops have a narrow genetic base. The production and productivity of these crops is adversely affected by different biotic and abiotic stresses, and high levels of resistance or tolerance to these stresses are not available in the cultivated genepool. In contrast, wild species harbor many useful genes and have potential to thrive well under climatic extremities. However, utilization of these wild species for the genetic improvement of crop cultivars is hindered mainly due to ploidy level differences between cultivated and wild species, cross‐incompatibility barriers, and linkage drag. Systematic prebreeding efforts involving wild species of Cicer, Cajanus, and Arachis as donors and popular well‐adapted cultivars of chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.), pigeonpea [Cajanus cajan (L.) Millsp.], and groundnut (Arachis hypogea L.) as recipient parents, respectively, have led to the development of new genepools having good agronomic performance and higher frequency of useful genes and alleles introgressed from wild species. Evaluation of a few populations for biotic stresses and yield‐related traits resulted in the identification of desirable introgression lines (ILs) that have been shared with NARS for use in breeding programs. Overall, prebreeding ensures continuous supply of novel and diverse genetic variability derived from wild species in readily usable form into the breeding pipelines to develop new climate‐resilient cultivars with a broad genetic base.

Management and distribution of experimental data from prebreeding projects is important to ensure uptake of germplasm into breeding and research programs. Being able to access and share this data in standard formats is essential. The adoption of a common informatics platform for crops that may have limited resources brings economies of scale, allowing common informatics components to be used across multiple species. The close integration of such a platform with commonly used breeding software, visualization, and analysis tools reduces the barrier for entry to researchers and provides a common framework to facilitate collaborations and data sharing. This work presents significant updates to the Germinate platform and highlights its value in distributing prebreeding data for 14 crops as part of the project ‘Adapting Agriculture to Climate Change: Collecting, Protecting and Preparing Crop Wild Relatives’ (hereafter Crop Trust Crop Wild Relatives project) led by the Crop Trust (https://www.cwrdiversity.org). The addition of data on these species compliments data already publicly available in Germinate. We present a suite of updated Germinate features using examples from these crop species and their wild relatives. The use of Germinate within the Crop Trust Crop Wild Relatives project demonstrates the usefulness of the system and the benefits a shared informatics platform provides. These data resources provide a foundation on which breeding and research communities can develop additional online resources for their crops, harness new data as it becomes available, and benefit collectively from future developments of the Germinate platform.

Pearl millet [Pennisetum glaucum (L.) R. Br.] is one of the world's hardiest warm‐season cereal crop and is cultivated mainly in the semi‐arid tropics of Asia and Africa for food, feed, fodder, and brewing. It is mainly cultivated for its gluten‐free grains with high content and better quality of nutrients. Pearl millet is a resilient crop that can produce grain and biomass under harsh conditions like low fertility, erratic rainfall, acidic and saline soils, and the hottest climates. However, biotic stresses such as downy mildew and blast diseases and abiotic stresses, especially drought and seedling‐ and flowering‐stage heat stress, pose constant threat to the realization of yield potential of this crop. To make further improvement in threshold level of abiotic and biotic stress tolerance, breeders are looking for novel genes in diverse germplasm sources. Crop wild relatives (CWRs) could be a source of novel genes that are important for diversification of the genetic base of pearl millet. A stage‐gate process is proposed for the efficient management of prebreeding programs using CWRs as a source of germplasm diversity and improvement. This article explains the various strategies for capturing and using alleles for climate resilience traits improvement. This article covers breeders’ perspectives on importance of using CWRs as germplasm source for crop improvement. This article also describes the availability of CWRs, characterization of new traits and the strategies to be applied for the identification and introduction of genes of interest in elite breeding lines and commercial varieties and hybrids of pearl millet.