Wheat breeding to better feed a growing world: historic insights and future potential elaborated using a diverse cultivars collection and extended phenotyping.

Abstract

Wheat is one of the most important staple crops playing a pivotal role to sustainably feed the growing world population. Wheat breeding mainly focused on improving agronomy and techno-functionality for bread or pasta production, but nutrient content is becoming increasingly more important to fight malnutrition. We therefore investigated 282 bread wheat cultivars from seven decades of wheat breeding in Central Europe on 63 different traits related to agronomy, quality and nutrients under multiple field trials. Wheat breeding has tremendously increased grain yield, resistance against diseases and lodging as well as baking quality across last decades. Whereas, mineral content slightly decreased without selection on it, probably due to its negative correlation with grain yield. The significant genetic variances determined for almost all traits show the potential for further improvement but significant negative correlations among grain yield and baking quality as well as grain yield and mineral content complicate their combined improvement. Thus, compromises in improvement of these traits are necessary to feed a growing global population.