Accelerating Grain Legume Improvement: Speed Breeding, Genomic Prediction and Multi-omics for Climate-Resilient Pulses

Grain legumes (pulses such as chickpea, lentil, pigeonpea, grasspea, blackgram, mungbean, common bean and cowpea) are central to climate-resilient, sustainable agri-food systems - they fix atmospheric nitrogen, diversify cropping, and deliver affordable protein and phytochemicals - yet they remain “orphan” crops with far thinner genomic and breeding-technology investment than cereals. This Research Topic aims to close that gap. It brings together work that applies genomics assisted breeding, speed breeding, genomic prediction, precision breeding and multi-omics specifically to grain legumes, so that useful traits are identified faster, superior genotypes are selected more reliably, and climate-adapted pulse varieties reach farmers in fewer cycles. We particularly seek studies that link molecular and phenotypic data to actual breeding decisions and cultivar development in legumes.Pulses are disproportionately exposed to climate stress - terminal drought, heat and emerging diseases - while their long breeding cycles and limited genomic resources slow variety turnover. Legume genomes bring their own challenges: complex genetic architecture for stress tolerance, strong genotype-by-environment interaction, and, in several species, restricted genetic diversity from domestication bottlenecks. Advances in speed breeding, genomic and phenomic prediction, genome editing and multi-omics now make rapid, data-driven legume improvement realistic, but these tools are still applied to pulses far less than to major cereals. Consolidating legume-focused advances in one collection will accelerate translation from discovery to resilient, nutritious pulse cultivars.This Research Topic welcomes contributions applying modern breeding and omics technologies to grain legumes and pulses for productivity and climate resilience. Themes of interest include, but are not limited to:• Speed breeding and rapid generation advancement protocols optimised for legume species• Genomic and phenomic selection / prediction models for legume yield and stress traits• CRISPR/Cas and precision-breeding approaches in pulses• Multi-omics integration (genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, phenomics) for drought, heat, salinity and disease tolerance in legumes• High-throughput and field phenotyping tailored to legume architecture• Mining legume genetic resources, wild relatives and pangenomes for adaptive alleles• Translational pipelines linking legume genomic discoveries to released cultivarsWe welcome Original Research, Reviews, Mini Reviews, Methods, Perspectives and Opinion articles, with a preference for interdisciplinary studies demonstrating concrete breeding outcomes in pulses. Topic editors: Shallu Thakur, ALOK DAS, Yogesh Dashrath Naik Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/85802/accelerating-grain-legume-improvement-speed-breeding-genomic-prediction-and-multi-omics-for-climate-resilient-pulses