Conventional plant breeding and genetic research have evolved significantly in recent decades. However, to meet the growing human population's food demand, especially for major staple cereal and legume crops, genetic gain needs to be enhanced, making it necessary to exploit genetic diversity within cultivated crops and wild relatives. With modern technologies, plant breeders can utilize these additional resources of diversity to address problems like biotic and abiotic stresses and yield, combining methods from genomics, phenomics, and advanced analytics in cereal and legume breeding programs on a massive scale.

Furthermore, precision plant phenotyping is equally important as genomics for meaningful conclusions and desired trait improvement. Phenomics technology has unlocked the door for high-throughput phenotyping for desirable traits in greenhouses as well as in the field, yet its widespread use across cereal and legume crops is limited due to expense, facility limitations and challenges with big data analysis.

The goal of this Research Topic is to gather present breakthroughs in genomics, phenomics, and plant biotechnology approaches aimed at improving abiotic and biotic stress tolerance in legumes and cereals. This topic highlights the molecular mechanisms that address biotic and abiotic stress tolerance, molecular interactions and the characterization of hormone-mediated signaling pathways to improve understanding of plant stress biology, particularly in legumes and cereals.

We welcome high-quality original research articles and critical reviews that highlight efforts toward improving the tolerance of legumes and cereals to biotic and abiotic stress through:

- Genome-wide association studies, QTL and association mapping for different abiotic and biotic traits in cereals and legume crops
- Development of base population and genomic selection into cereal and legume crops breeding for trait improvement
- Exploration of a high throughput phenotyping platform for phenotype selection
- Integration of genomics, phenomics and advanced analytics (digital imaging, artificial intelligence, remote sensing, deep and machine learning) in cereal and legume breeding programs
- Current developments and issues with the widespread use of phenotyping platforms in field settings
- Functional genomics, comparative genomics, molecular marker development, molecular mechanism to identify genes and pathways for plant stress tolerance and growth regulation, hormone-mediated signaling pathways, transgenic legumes and cereals, application of nanotechnology and genome editing.

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Frontiers in Plant Science

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