Wheat Wild Germplasm: A Hidden Treasure

Abstract Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) has always been the most valuable staple food in the world cereal production. It is the leading grain crop of temperate climates of the world, like rice in the tropics. Wheat along with other cereal grains has many natural advantages as a grain food. It is an important inexpensive food providing calories, carbohydrates, and protein, and is readily converted into numerous products solely or in variable proportions with other food products for producing nutritious rich food accommodates. Globally, wild relatives of wheat are maintained in various world germplasm resources, some accessions are well documented and reported for utilization in wheat improvement programs but still some other accessions are poorly characterized and there may be numerous causes for this. These wild relatives need more time for the germplasm improvement and few institutes are involved with their interspecific hybridization, needs more use of modern tools like in cotton, rice, maize, and soybean. Wheat and related wild species produce from many generations rapidly ranging from perennial to annual types and face less danger of extinction as compared to cultivated landraces. But in fact, many annual wild relatives are under extinction threat due to changing pattern land use, monotype wheat cultivation, climate change, and stresses. Emmer wild wheat has involvement from different wild populations to develop wild relatives. Present cultivated wheat contains genomes from Aegilops and Triticum genus, Aegilops is not grown anywhere in the world but several polyploid species of Triticum are cultivated including T. turgidum, T. timopheevii, and T. compactum. Most of wild diploid species are presumably monophyletic in origin and gave rise to hexaploid wheat with divergence for growth requirement in different locations around the globe. Evidence from literature showed that multiple wild population contribution toward modern wheat and incorporation of biotechnological tools have eased the development of superior trait wheat types. In the proceeding chapter, some aspects of wheat improvement have been discussed to give an overview of what that has been achieved for the development of modern wheat varieties and could be expected more from wild relatives.