About this Research Topic

Background

Future food security faces numerous challenges, such as growing population, decreasing natural resources, and global warming. Experts predict that the world will not be able to grow enough food to feed itself by 2050 unless the yield increases significantly. Thus, efforts to increase crop production to feed the future remain a top mission for all plant scientists in agriculture across the world. Genetic and environmental factors determine crop yields. Accordingly, yield protection from adverse environmental factors by increasing crop biotic or abiotic resilience and yield enhancement by altering growth/development are the potentials in plant sciences for yield increase. Great efforts in both public and private sectors in agriculture are made to increase yield potential mainly through yield protection. While the yield protection strategy is very successful, yield enhancement is also desirable and possible to increase crop yields, especially with more and more genes and pathways related to crop yield identified. Manipulation of these genes or pathways provides a powerful genetic approach to leverage naturally evolved traits for yield enhancement.

In this research topic, we invite manuscripts to explore emerging approaches for enhancing crop yield through either traditional breeding or genetic engineering. While descriptive manuscripts that report changes in yield without providing any mechanistic insight into the biological system will not be in scope for this manuscripts collection, we invite manuscripts in the following areas:

1. Analysis of yield-defining traits using the candidate-gene approaches

2. Identifying new candidate gene(s) for crop yield increase

3. Gain/Loss-of-function study of candidate gene(s) for crop yield increase, for example:

o Flowering pathway gene(s) that has impact on inflorescence formation, fertility, and flowering time
o Phytohormone related gene(s) that has a broad impact on shoot and root traits
o Photosynthesis related gene(s) that can enhance biomass formation and affect biomass partition
o Gene(s) that can enhance nutrient acquisition and use efficiency
o Abiotic resistant genes
o Biotic resistant genes
o Other genes that can regulate metabolite pathway

4. Field test of genetically engineered (GE) crops

5. Gene network analysis of GE crops for yield increase

Keywords: Crop yield, Genetic Approaches, Field testing, Genetic engineering, Plant breeding

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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