In the face of increasing demand of food grains and progressively shrinking and degrading natural resources of land, water and biodiversity , upgrading and protecting crop productivity has become a major challenge. Uncertainties created by global and local climate changes compound the problem further. Crop varieties of the future, therefore, will need to be innately more productive, resilient to biotic and a biotic stresses, nutritionally superior and amenable to processing to yield varied products, Fortunately, rapid scientific discoveries and technological advances are now becoming available for incisive understanding and management of plant genetic apparatus for crafting 'new generation' crop varieties to meet these demands. Developments in this area have been particularly rapid during the last decade. Breeding Field Crops 2 records this progress and evaluates its implications by authors who are specialists of distinction.
