Dear Colleagues,

For the global food security, the tribe Triticeae is arguably the most important group of crop species. Triticeae houses approximately 500 annual and perennial species and plays a vital role in nurturing human civilization, livelihood, and food security. Triticeae is the home of a number of the world’s most important cereal crop species including wheat, barley, rye, and triticale, and together, these constitute over 50% of total crop production worldwide (http://www.fao.org/). Additionally, the cereal grains are considered one of the most important renewable resources for food, feed, and industrial raw materials.

The world human population is expected to surpass 9 billion in 2050. Global crop productions will be required to be increased at the rate of ~2% per year up to 2050 to produce enough food to feed this rapidly growing human population. Rapidly increasing human population, changing climatic conditions, and various biotic and abiotic stresses pose big challenges for the production of cereal crop plants and hence affecting world food security. These challenges have led scientists working on Triticeae breeding, genetic, and genomics to generate a breadth of information to develop tools and germplasm, genetic, and genomic resources that enables development of elite cultivars.

Next-generation sequencing and technical advances in sequencing technologies and genome assembly programs have led to the establishment of the reference genomes of several plant species. The complexities of the major small grain crop plants, including wheat, barley, and rye genomes have hampered the development of genomics resources and their application to produce improved Triticeae cultivars. Recently, reference genome, exome, and transcriptome resources were established for the important crop plants (wheat barley and rye) from the tribe Triticeae. These advances in Triticeae genomics will deliver new knowledge and tools to scientists for a better understanding of Triticeae genomes organization, evolution, and function. These new developments will allow crop breeders to incorporate new gene alleles against biotic and abiotic stresses and to improve quality traits to satisfy the needs of small grain stakeholders.

This Research Topic will provide an excellent platform to bring together new knowledge related to genetics and genomics of small grain crops to improve their resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses and the composition, nutritional quality, and processing properties through molecular breeding approaches. The Topic will also deliver valuable information on agronomically important genes, across the small grain crops at the chromosomal and DNA levels.

Dr. Vijay Tiwari
Dr. Nicholas Santantonio
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Genes is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Genome
• Sequencing
• QTL
• Exome
• Gene
• Transposons
• Yield
• Diseases
• Resistance
• Breeding
• Genomics
• Phenomics
• Translocations
• Heat
• Drought