Wheat (Triticum spp and, particularly, T. aestivum L.) is an essential cereal with increased human and animal nutritional demand. Therefore, there is a need to enhance wheat yield and genetic gain using modern breeding technologies alongside proven methods to achieve the necessary increases in productivity. These modern technologies will allow breeders to develop improved wheat cultivars more quickly and efficiently. This review aims to highlight the emerging technological trends used worldwide in wheat breeding, with a focus on enhancing wheat yield. The key technologies for introducing variation (hybridization among the species, synthetic wheat, and hybridization; genetically modified wheat; transgenic and gene-edited), inbreeding (double haploid (DH) and speed breeding (SB)), selection and evaluation (marker-assisted selection (MAS), genomic selection (GS), and machine learning (ML)) and hybrid wheat are discussed to highlight the current opportunities in wheat breeding and for the development of future wheat cultivars.

Barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) thrives in the arid and semi-arid regions of the world; nevertheless, it suffers large grain yield losses due to drought stress. A panel of 426 lines of barley was evaluated in Egypt under deficit (DI) and full irrigation (FI) during the 2019 and 2020 growing seasons. Observations were recorded on the number of days to flowering (NDF), total chlorophyll content (CH), canopy temperature (CAN), grain filling duration (GFD), plant height (PH), and grain yield (Yield) under DI and FI. The lines were genotyped using the 9K Infinium iSelect single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) genotyping platform, which resulted in 6913 high-quality SNPs. In conjunction with the SNP markers, the phenotypic data were subjected to a genome-wide association scan (GWAS) using Bayesian-information and Linkage-disequilibrium Iteratively Nested Keyway (BLINK). The GWAS results indicated that 36 SNPs were significantly associated with the studied traits under DI and FI. Furthermore, eight markers were significant and common across DI and FI water regimes, while 14 markers were uniquely associated with the studied traits under DI. Under DI and FI, three (11_10326, 11_20042, and 11_20170) and five (11_20099, 11_10326, 11_20840, 12_30298, and 11_20605) markers, respectively, had pleiotropic effect on at least two traits. Among the significant markers, 24 were annotated to known barley genes. Most of these genes were involved in plant responses to environmental stimuli such as drought. Overall, nine of the significant markers were previously reported, and 27 markers might be considered novel. Several markers identified in this study could enable the prediction of barley accessions with optimal agronomic performance under DI and FI.

Field pennycress ( Thlaspi arvense L.) is a new winter annual cash cover crop with high oil content and seed yield, excellent winter hardiness, early maturation, and resistance to most pests and diseases. It provides living cover on fallow croplands between summer seasons, and in doing so reduces nutrient leaching into water sources, mitigates soil erosion, and suppresses weed growth. The first ever genome‐wide association study (GWAS) was conducted on a pennycress diversity panel to identify marker trait associations with important seed size and composition related traits. The entire population was phenotyped in three total environments over 2 yr, and seed area, length, width, thousand grain weight, total oil, and total protein were measured post‐harvest with specialized high‐throughput imaging and near‐infrared spectroscopy. Basic unbiased linear prediction values were calculated for each trait. Seed size traits tended to have higher entry mean reliabilities (0.76–0.79) compared with oil content (0.51) and protein content (0.37). Genotyping‐by‐sequencing identified 33,606 high quality genome‐wide single nucleotide polymorphism (SNPs) that were coupled with phenotypic data to perform GWAS for seed area, length, width, thousand grain weight, total oil, and total protein content. Fifty‐nine total marker–trait associations were identified revealing genomic regions controlling each trait. The significant SNPs explained 0.06–0.18% of the total variance for that trait in our population. A list of candidate genes was identified based on their functional annotations and characterization in other species. Our results confirm that GWAS is an efficient strategy to identify significant marker–trait associations that can be incorporated into marker‐assisted selection pipelines to accelerate pennycress breeding progress.

Thlaspi arvense (field pennycress) is being domesticated as a winter annual oilseed crop capable of improving ecosystems and intensifying agricultural productivity without increasing land use. It is a selfing diploid with a short life cycle and is amenable to genetic manipulations, making it an accessible field-based model species for genetics and epigenetics. The availability of a high quality reference genome is vital for understanding pennycress physiology and for clarifying its evolutionary history within the Brassicaceae. Here, we present a chromosome-level genome assembly of var. MN106-Ref with improved gene annotation, and use it to investigate gene structure differences between two accessions (MN108 and Spring32-10) that are highly amenable to genetic transformation. We describe small RNAs, pseudogenes, and transposable elements, and highlight tissue specific expression and methylation patterns. Resequencing of forty wild accessions provides insights into genome-wide genetic variation as well as QTL regions for flowering time and a seedling color phenotype. Altogether, these data will serve as a tool for pennycress improvement in general and for translational research across the Brassicaceae.

Wheat stem sawfly (WSS, Cephus cinctus Norton) threatens wheat ( Triticum aestivum L.) production in the US Great Plains. Increased stem solidness improves resistance to WSS but developing solid‐stemmed cultivars requires time‐consuming and destructive phenotyping. To expedite development of WSS‐resistant cultivars, a high‐throughput phenotyping method is needed. Therefore, we assessed phenomic prediction using uncrewed aerial systems (UAS) to predict stem solidness, WSS infestation, and yield in wheat. Multispectral and red‐green‐blue UAS data were collected in‐season at two naturally infested locations in western Nebraska from 2023 to 2024. The spectral reflectance indices from the UAS data were compared with agronomic traits (i.e., yield and plant height) and WSS traits (i.e., stem solidness and WSS infestation). Ridge regression, k ‐nearest neighbors (KNN), and random forest (RF) models were then trained to use spectral indices to predict yield, stem solidness, and WSS infestation. Correlations between WSS and spectral traits were temporally and environmentally dependent. The best prediction model depended on the biological trait. RF performed the best for yield ( r = 0.469), KNN for stem solidness ( r = 0.231), and ridge regression for WSS infestation ( r = 0.194). Predicting traits based on spectral data in a new environment was poor for both stem solidness ( r = 0.02–0.38) and WSS infestation ( r = 0.01–0.22). Our ability to predict WSS resistance was low, and UAS‐based phenotyping was not viable with current technology.

Camelina is being developed as a winter oilseed cover crop. Early flowering and maturity are desired traits in camelina to allow for relay planting or seeding of a summer annual following camelina harvest. Here we report that while all winter biotype accessions of camelina have a functional allele of FLOWERING LOCUS C (FLC) on chromosome 20, there are also at least 20 previously characterized spring biotype accessions that have a functional FLC allele at this locus. We observed this by analyzing 75 accessions (67 spring type, one facultative, and seven winter type) that were resequenced by Li et al., (2020) as well as 21 additional accessions for this analysis. This discovery will inform marker assisted selection efforts that are underway to increase genetic variation in the genetically narrow base of winter camelina germplasm. Furthermore, we optimized a KASP genotyping approach that effectively differentiates the presence of either the functional or subfunctional FLC allele on chromosome 20. These analyses identified a facultative winter biotype accession of camelina ( PI650163 -1, winter hardy with subfunctional chromosome 20 FLC allele) that has demonstrated two years of winter-hardiness and has flowered at least a week earlier than the common winter accession, ‘Joelle’. A bioinformatics approach to cytotype analysis in camelina also provided more precise categorizing of camelina accessions in the USDA-NPGS germplasm into 2n=38 and 2n=40 cytotypes. Early maturing winter-hardy camelina will reduce stress on a subsequent soybean crop and improve total cropping system yields when camelina and soybean are grown sequentially in the same season on the same land.