Using genomics to adapt crops to climate change

Abstract

Rising food demand from a growing global population, combined with a changing climate, endangers global food security. Thus, there is a need to breed new varieties and increase the efficiency and environmental resilience of crops. Past intensification of crop production has primarily been achieved using fertilisers, herbicides and insecticides as well as improved agronomic methods. However, these practices often rely on finite resources and lack sustainability, making them impractical to increase production in the long term. The ongoing revolution in genomics offers an unprecedented potential to aid crops in adapting to changing environments and increase yield, while also facilitating the diversification of crop production with minor and newly established crop species. Identifying the genomic basis of climate-related agronomic traits for introgression into crop germplasm is a major challenge, requiring the integration of sequencing technologies and breeding expertise. Here we review state of the art genomic tools and their application for accelerating crop improvement in the face of climate change.