Advances in Wheat Breeding : Towards Climate Resilience and Nutrient Security

This edited book addresses the introduction to wheat, advancements in breeding, the contribution of biotechnological approaches, the development of climate-resilient wheat cultivars, and biofortification efforts to create nutrient-rich wheat cultivars.

The world faces simultaneous challenges of a growing population and climate change. It is anticipated that the world population will exceed 9 billion by 2050. Meanwhile, climate change significantly impacts agriculture through uneven patterns, expected to worsen in the coming years, resulting in substantial losses due to biotic and abiotic stresses. Wheat, a staple food for millions worldwide, requires more studies to develop climate-resilient cultivars with improved nutritional content. Given these considerations, it is crucial to understand the activities conducted for wheat breeding and address the current gap to ensure an ample food supply for future generations.

This book is beneficial for researchers, teachers, agriculturists, biologists, climate change scientists, and organizations involved in wheat breeding. It also serves as a valuable resource for undergraduate, master, and PhD students interested in wheat.

Prof. Nusret Zencirci is a graduate of Çukurova University, Faculty of Agriculture, Department of Field Crops. He worked as a wheat breeder in Central Research Institute for Field Crops, Ankara and served as National and International Coordinator to Wheat programs including Interntaional Winter Wheat Improvement Program carried by Türkiye, CIMMIYT, and ICARDA. He is a molecular biology professor now at Bolu Abant İzzet Baysal University, Science and Art Faculty, Biology Department, Bolu, Turkey. He is a member of various editorial boards in many  international journals. He is, with his team, breeder of 22 bread and durum wheat cultivars.  His research interests are Cereals, Biotic and Abiotic Stresses, Plant Genetic Resources, and Wheat Breeding.

Prof. Dr. Fahri ALTAY was born in Bilecik,1942. Graduated Atatürk University, Faculty of Agriculture in 1967, he was appointed to Eskişehir Seed Improvement and Experiment Station in 1967. His PhD was "The Inheritance of Resistance to Brown Rust (Puccinia recondita) in Nine Bread Wheat Varieties". He became the Director to the Institute In 1980. After retired from the Institute in 2001 worked in some private companies and, then, joined Bilecik Şeyh Edebali University in 2008.He contirbuted to the breeding of 28 wheat varieties. Among these varieties, Gerek 79 has the largest cultivation area (1.5 million ha.), and Atay 85 variety has the highest yield (1350 kg/da). He visited many Universities and Research Institutes in 22 different countries, primarily the USA, Mexico and Hungary.

Dr. Faheem Shehzad Baloch is working as Professor of plant genetics and genomics at Sivas University of Science and Technology, Sivas, Turkey. He received his Ph.D. with a dissertation on ‘QTL mapping in wheat’ from University of çukurova, Adana, Turkey in 2012. Dr. Baloch has more than 10 years of teaching and research experience in the plant phenomics, genetics and genomics and biotechnology for plant improvement program. He led and participated in many projects funded by national and international organizations. He supervised and co-supervised MSC, PhD and postdoc candidates from various countries. He has over 120 publications in the WOS database. He has co-edited 6 books and written over 14 book chapters on important aspects of molecular genetics in relation to plant species. He has an extensive array of citations with over 3800 times as per google scholar with an h-Index of 32. Dr. Faheem serves as Editorial board member of several impacted journals in WOS.

Muhammad Azhar Nadeem, working as an Associate Professor at the Department of Plant Production and Technologies, Faculty of Agricultural Sciences and Technologies, Sivas University of Science and Technology, Türkiye has documented great skills and expertise in crop science, plant genomics, and molecular plant breeding. Dr. Nadeem has been actively engaged in research activities involving the assessment of genetic diversity, population structure and performing genome-wide association studies (GWAS) for the identification of genomic regions associated with the traits of interest. He is actively involved in the molecular breeding of some cereals and legumes and the identified genomic regions through GWAS that will be helpful for the future marker-assisted breeding of cereals and legumes. Dr. Nadeem has a good number of research publications and served as co-editor of 2 published books.

Ndiko Ludidi is a Professor of Biotechnology at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa. He is an established researcher (NRF rating of C2, until Dec. 2025) with expertise in plant molecular biology, plant physiology and biochemistry. He has extensive university-level teaching experience in biochemistry, plant biotechnology and plant physiology. His research interests are in plant- environment interactions, with focus on abiotic and biotic stress in crop plants. The abiotic aspects of his research relate to physiological and molecular effects of drought, heat and salinity stress on plants. The biotic aspects of his research concern the influence of microbial diversity on crops tolerance to the abiotic stresses.