ABSTRACT
Wheat is pre-eminent among the world’s crops with regard to its antiquity and its importance as a food of mankind. The origin of wheat is considered to be the Central Asia region and the Near East Asia region. The North Western frontier areas of India are also considered to be a probable primary centre of origin of bread wheat. In prehistoric times, it was cultivated throughout Europe and was one of the most valuable cereals of ancient Persia, Greece, and Egypt. Wheat has been cultivated for several 1,000 years in India with wheat grains found in the Mohenjo-daro excavations. In India, farmers grew heterogeneous landraces and landrace mixtures, known as ‘sorts’ until the early 1900s when systematic wheat improvement efforts were initiated by Sir Albert Howard and his wife Lady G.L.C. Howard. Since then, wheat improvement programme has undergone several phases among which Green Revolution era was a benchmark for a quantum jump in wheat production. This journey through 20th century has witnessed the application of various approaches ranging from selection in sorts, pure line breeding, and introgression of alien genes through interspecific hybridization to modern breeding techniques, integrating molecular and physiological approaches. The modern wheat improvement strategies have resulted in a bouquet of a large number of improved varieties for various production conditions. In India, three wheat species, namely Triticum aestivum, T. durum, and T. dicoccum are in cultivation under high fertility irrigated timely sown conditions, irrigated late sown conditions, and timely sown restricted irrigation conditions in five wheat mega zones in the country. Despite overcoming several challenges in these periods, new challenges of abiotic stresses especially increasing heat stress and biotic stresses due to new virulent races require continuous multidisciplinary research efforts to sustain the wheat production levels for future food security. As there is sufficient wheat production ensuring national and regional food security, there is a need of more focused efforts for the improvement of grain and nutritional quality traits for various wheat-based products.
