Crop Wild Relatives (CWRs) a Genetic Pool for Crop Improvement: A Review

Abstract

Deleterious effects of climatic changes and diverse environmental conditions, possess a major threat to agriculture in terms of growth and yield. So, to meet these challenges, there is a need to develop new crop varieties containing traits resistant against abiotic and biotic stresses and enhanced input use efficiency. Compared with domesticated cultivars, crop wild relatives maintains much higher level of genetic diversity. The high nutrient and bioactive content of many wild edible plants make them valued contributors for balanced diet and play significant role in human nutrition. In this review article, we discussed the importance of crop wild relative in crop improvement programs by giving examples of wild relatives that have been used to enhance abiotic and biotic stress tolerance and yield in various crop species. The advancement in DNA sequence technology enables plant breeders to produce high quality food. Further, combination of re-sequencing and de novo sequencing are efficiently used to explore genomic variation in crop wild relatives and moreover the genome analysis study results in detection of beneficial alleles in wild relatives which has been lost in cultivated species. Thus, conservation of genetic pool of crop wild relatives is essential to maintain sustainability of agriculture and food production.