Editorial: Trends and perspectives for the use of crop wild relatives in crop breeding, volume II

Abstract

Editorial on the Research TopicTrends and perspectives for the use of crop wild relatives in crop breeding, volume II Crop wild relatives (CWRs) are crucial assets for agrobiodiversity, sustainable agriculture, and food security, offering vital genetic traits such as pest resistance, resource efficiency, and extreme weather adaptability (Dwivedi et al., 2007).Domestication bottlenecks and the heavy reliance on elite breeding lines have, however, caused severe genetic erosion in modern crops, limiting their adaptive potential.Although CWRs and their associated microbiota hold vast potential to counter these vulnerabilities (Ortiz et al., 2024), they face severe environmental threats and underutilization due to biological barriers and knowledge gaps (Bassi et al., 2024).Overcoming these constraints through advanced genomic resources, phenotypic characterization, and interspecific hybridization is essential to harnessing wild and landrace diversity for climate-resilient crop improvement, as noted in the 10 articles collected in this Research Topic in Frontiers in Plant Science.Avasiloaiei et al. indicated that CWRs and landraces are vital genetic reservoirs for enhancing legume crops against escalating abiotic stresses and biotic pressures.The authors explained that domestication significantly narrowed the cultivated legumes' genetic base, thus limiting their yield stability under climate change.CWRs harbor crucial alleles for physiological resilience, stress signaling, and symbiotic nitrogen fixation in major species such as bean (Phaseolus vulgaris), chickpea (Cicer arietinum), and soybean (Glycine max).Integrating these wild gene pools with landraces via modern breeding innovations, such as high-throughput phenotyping, multi-omics, and gene editing, allows researchers to capture complex multigenic traits, minimize linkage drag, and accelerate the development of climate-resilient cultivars to ensure sustainable global food security.Artemisia argyi -a traditional Chinese medicine plant-faces germplasm and cytological research hurdles due to its complex genomic structures.To overcome this, Li et al. used the reference genome to develop 20 repetitive sequence oligonucleotide probes configured into two multiplex cocktails for non-denaturing fluorescence in situ hybridization.Combining these with 45S rDNA markers and electronic localization established a high-resolution, genomemap-based karyotype for the cultivar 'Qicun Xiang Ai'.This framework enabled chromosome identification across diverse cultivars, revealing that A. argyi is a disomic tetraploid (4x) with a basic chromosome number (x) of 17.Additionally, chromosomal doubling successfully Frontiers in Plant Science frontiersin.