Next Generation Food Crops for Human Health

As the global population surges, the challenge of feeding the world becomes increasingly urgent. Meeting this demand requires doubling crop yields and delivering safe, nutritious, and affordable food, but current agricultural practices fall short in combating malnutrition, climate change impacts, and the decline in food diversity.

Next-Generation Food Crops for Human Health delves into the advances in genetic and genomic research that are revolutionizing the development of productive, nutrient-dense food crops. It presents insights into tools including high-throughput phenomics, DNA sequencing, and genomic selection, which enable scientists to discover functionally characterized genes and enhance staple crops, such as grains, legumes, fruits, vegetables, and oil crops. By leveraging these technologies, researchers are creating a new generation of foods that optimize essential nutrients, from complex carbohydrates and proteins to vitamins and bioactive compounds.

A volume in the Nextgen Agriculture: Novel Concepts and Innovative Strategies series, this book is valuable to graduate and postgraduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and policymakers working toward improving nutritional security worldwide.

Sangam L. Dwivedi (An Indian national) Qualification: MSc, PhD (Genetics and Plant Breeding). Worked for ICRISAT as Senior Scientist (Groundnut breeding) or as a consultant in various capacity (plant genetic resources, breeding & genetics, biotechnology, HarvestPlus) at ICRISAT or other countries (Myanmar, Srilanka, USA, Vietnam) for almost 35 years and retired. Contributed to the release of 25 peanut cultivars (Cyprus, Ghana, India, Korea, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam) and registered several elite peanut germplasms with specific attributes in Crop Science for the benefit of the peanut researchers globally. Published 150 journal articles including research articles and invited reviews (biofortification, climate change, crop wild relatives, deleterious mutations, drought tolerance, flavonoids, genetic gains, genetic resources, genetic trade-off’s, haploids, heirloom cultivars, landraces, molecular breeding, nutrition, reproductive trait biology, root plasticity, seed genomics, seed phytate, transgene) in prestigious journals.

Rodomiro Ortiz (Lima, Perú; 1958) is Faculty Professor and Chair of Genetics and Plant Breeding at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), and SLU Breeding Network Chairman. He holds a PhD in Plant Breeding & Genetics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and worked as young researcher at UNALM (Perú), Centro Internacional de la Papa (CIP, Perú) and Rutgers University, was scientist and director of various CGIAR Centers (CIMMYT. ICRISAT, IITA), and held a Nordic professorship on plant genetic resources at the then Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University of Denmark (merged thereafter with the University of Copenhagen). Professor Ortiz has written ca. 1000 reports, of which about 50% are journal articles or edited book chapters with h-index of 75 and cited by 22700 [as per Google Scholar on 2023.06.09]. The CGIAR awarded to IITA the prestigious 1994 King Baudouin Award for the multidisciplinary research of the team working in plantain and banana improvement, in which he was program leader. In 2012, Plant Breeding Reviews dedicated him its volume 36. Professor Ortiz was the principal investigator of SLU/ICARDA-led research development partnership project Adapting durum wheat varieties to the Senegal Basin for food security that won the 2017 Olam Prize for Innovation in Food Security. He was given the Bertebos Prize 2022 for mastering the use of new molecular scientific methods to be a driving force in the breeding of crops of great importance for food supply in Africa, America and Europe. Professor Ortiz was member of CGIAR Independent Science and Partnership Council (ISPC, 2015-2019) and of the Commission on Sustainable Agriculture Intensification (CoSAI, 2020-2021), international fellow of the Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry (KSLA) since 2019, member of the Royal Physiographic Society at Lund (KFS) from 2021 onwards, and fellow of the African Academy of Sciences (FAAS) since 2021.

Chittaranjan Kole is an internationally reputed scientist with an illustrious professional career spanning over thirty-seven years and original contributions in the fields of plant genomics and biotechnology leading to the publication of more than 150 research articles in globally leading journals. He has edited over 180 books for the leading publishers of the world including Springer Nature, Wiley-Blackwell and Taylor & Francis Group. His works and editing acumen have been appreciated by seven Nobel Laureates including Profs. Norman Borlaug, Arthur Kornberg, Werner Arber, Phillip Sharp, Günter Blobel, Lee Hartwell and Roger Kornberg. Previously he was a Visiting Professor at Pennsylvania State University and Clemson University. He also served as the Vice-Chancellor of the BC Agricultural University in India. He is also the President of the International Climate-Resilient Crop Genomics Consortium (ICRCGC), International Phytomedomics and Nutriomics Consortium (IPNC) and Genome India International (GII). Presently he is working as the Chief Advisor of The Neotia University, Kolkata, India and Chairman of the Prof. Chittaranjan Kole Foundation for Science and Society.