Wild banana (Ensete spp.) is an important source of starchy food. In different geographical regions, it plays a significant role along with other wild crops in minimising the gap between supply and demand of food. Wild banana can tolerate and survive in severe drought conditions and, therefore, may emerge as future crops for regions experiencing changes in climate and water scarcity. This review highlights the current status and future prospects related to wild banana.

Common bean is an important legume crop that has long been used as a staple food. Pod shattering is an important early trait to be selected against in crop domestication. Introgression of shattering resistance into commercial varieties could mitigate the imminent yield losses.

Climate change substantially affects the global food, environmental and nutritional security, as well as biodiversity and ecosystem services. Wild relatives of forage crops and their functional trait diversity can be exploited for future stress breeding programs and development of climate-resilient crops. Forage crops could be used to curtail emission of greenhouse gases and improve resource-use efficiency (light, nutrients and water) in degraded land.

Wild relatives of banana crop show resilience to climate change. To save the bananas for our future generations, wild bananas need to be conserved and maintained in specialised centres from which breeders can readily procure experimental accessions. Wild bananas have been screened for disease and environmental tolerance, with the aim of introgressing these traits in cultivated varieties. This study provides a comprehensive account of challenges and future prospects for use of crop wild relatives for banana improvement.

Good health, zero hunger and conservation of diversity are three major goals for sustainability in agriculture agriculture. Oat nutritional profiling, health benefits, and conventional breeding and biotechnological research are discussed in terms of improvement of different nutraceutical traits. This review could guide research into enhancing nutraceutical properties of oat.

We assessed the genetic diversity and DNA fingerprint of five rare species of the Brassicaceae genus Crambe, using six inter simple sequence repeat primers. The species could be clustered into two groups according to subsection of Crambe. The results demonstrate that the methods allow rare plants to be genetically certified.

African rice species Oryza glaberrima as a source of genes for improvement of Oryza sativa is well established for various biotic and abiotic stresses. In this study, yield and yield-related QTLs derived from O. glaberrima were mapped in backcross mapping populations of IR64 × O. glaberrima. The outcomes of the study will help in harnessing useful genomic regions from O. glaberrima for genetic improvement of O. sativa.

Changing climatic circumstances threaten the grain yield of wheat, a critically important crop. Keeping wheat green for a longer period of time increases grain yield. Various lines of germplasm were characterised in this study for their ability to retain greenness for a longer period of time and it was confirmed that these stay-green traits were connected with increased grain yield.

Chenopodium hircinum, the wild ancestor of quinoa, thrives in some of the hottest environments in South America. We found a wide range of variability for phenological traits among Argentinean populations of C. hircinum related to climatic variables from their sites of provenance. Populations originating from warmer climates show a suitable set of phenological traits for development of future quinoa varieties with resistance to heat stress.

Buckwheat is one of the important pseudocereals being used as an alternative to staple food like wheat because of its gluten-free properties. Genetic variability, heritability and genetic advance are important parameters for selecting superior buckwheat lines for breeding programmes. This study suggested that days to 50% flowering and plant height in buckwheat show higher heritability across altitudes of Jammu & Kashmir, in the Himalayas.

Salinity is a major problem in chickpea; landraces were used to identify novel sources using a seedling screening technique. We find two analysis methods (cumulative salt tolerance index and principal components analysis) that enable salt tolerant genotypes to be identified; and both techniques were equally reliable.. We identified ICCV10, CSG8962, ILC11902, IG5980, IG5893 as five salt tolerant genotypes.

Saline–alkaline soil is a global threat to crop production, and the combined effects of salinity and alkalinity may be greater than individual effects, with seed germination the most sensitive stage to these stresses. We evaluated oat germplasm under combined stress in order to identify and select lines with better seed germination and high vigour. The stress-tolerant lines identified could serve as base material for stress-tolerance breeding programs.