Feeding the ever-growing world population requires a combination of technologies to exploit the full potential of crop productivity and quality while preserving the environment. Crop improvement alters the genetic background of plants to develop improved varieties that meet diverse end-user demands. The role ...
Feeding the ever-growing world population requires a combination of technologies to exploit the full potential of crop productivity and quality while preserving the environment. Crop improvement alters the genetic background of plants to develop improved varieties that meet diverse end-user demands. The role of crop improvement in food production is even more critical in our era when the world is facing big challenges including climate change, soil degradation, and food insecurity worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic. Considering these challenges, it is no more enough to produce a lot of foods but it is critical to ensure that the growing global population has access to sustainable healthy diets. The United Nations Organization for Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Health Organization of the United Nations defined Sustainable Healthy Diets as “dietary patterns that promote all dimensions of individuals’ health and well-being; have low environmental pressure and impact; are accessible, affordable, safe and equitable; and are culturally acceptable.” Exploring the potential of new crops to adapt to climate change and contribute to healthy diets is attracting attention from the research community. In fact, recent technological advances especially in genome editing have raised interest in the de novo domestication of wild plants as a viable option for designing new crops to ensure crop and diet diversity.
This Research Topic aims to highlight on the progress in de novo domestication and its potential to ensure sustainable healthy diets.
The Research Topic welcomes original articles, mini-reviews, and review papers addressing the following themes:
• Identification of domestication genes and traits;
• Developing pipeline for application of the de novo domestication;
• Application of de novo domestication to create new crops.
Keywords:
de novo, diets
Important Note:
All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.