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Abstract
For nearly half a century, the international wheat breeding system has delivered
improved high yielding varieties of wheat that created (along with rice) the Green Revolution
and underpinned strong growth in wheat productivity in irrigated and rainfed, developed
and underdeveloped, regions. Future priorities for breeding and complementary sciences
will still include yield but will also diversify in response to changing market demands and
growing environments, particulary in developing countries. It is argued that in the coming
decades research on wheat quality characteristics will become increasingly important to
plant breeders, whose work will be supported by the development of markers and advanced
tools from molecular biology. Breeders will have to contend with increased heat stress and
variability stemming from climate change, which is expected to create regional winners, as
the northern high latitudes grow warmer and moister, and losers, as the sub-tropics and
tropics increasingly suffer from heat stress and drought. Yield response of improved varieties
in farmers’ fields depends to a very great degree on sustainable systems management, which
also is essential to reverse the ongoing degradation of agricultural resources. Finally, the
importance of expanding the systems lens from farmers to policy makers, and of linking
farmers, commerce, science, and policy is illustrated for the rice-wheat farming systems of
South Asia.