Harnessing Natural Genetic Diversity in Opportunity Crops for Climate Resilience and Nutritional Security

Climate change, land degradation, water scarcity, and persistent nutritional deficiencies are placing increasing pressure on global food systems.Enhancing crop diversity is widely recognized as a key strategy for improving agricultural resilience, sustainability, and nutritional security. Opportunity crops encompass a broad range of cereals, legumes, oilseeds, fruits, tubers, and vegetables that have been cultivated and conserved by local and indigenous communities for generations. These crops are frequently adapted to harsh environments and possess valuable traits for tolerance to drought, salinity, heat, and other abiotic stresses, while also offering high nutritional value. However, compared with major crops, many opportunity crops lack comprehensive genomic resources, phenotyping platforms, and breeding tools.Recent advances in genomics, pangenomics, high-throughput phenotyping, and multi-omics technologies provide unprecedented opportunities to unlock their potential. Millets, in particular, offer a compelling model for translating genetic diversity into climate resilience and nutritional improvement.Global food and nutritional security rely heavily on a small number of staple crops, including wheat, rice, maize, barley, and soybean. While these crops have driven agricultural productivity, intensive domestication and modern breeding have narrowed their genetic diversity, limiting their capacity to adapt to accelerating climate change and environmental stresses. In contrast, opportunity crops, often referred to as neglected and underutilized crops, including millets, Bambara groundnut, cowpea, and other indigenous crops, harbour rich reservoirs of natural genetic diversity for stress resilience and nutritional quality. Many of these crops are well adapted to marginal environments and provide valuable sources of essential nutrients, yet they remain underrepresented in research and breeding programmes due to limited genomic resources, phenotyping capacity, investment, and market integration.This Research Topic aims to highlight advances in the discovery and utilisation of natural genetic diversity in opportunity crops for abiotic stress tolerance and nutritional enhancement, supporting the development of climate-resilient, nutrient-dense crops and more sustainable, diversified food systems.This Research Topic welcomes original research, reviews, and perspectives articles that explore natural genetic diversity in opportunity crops, with particular emphasis on millets. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:• Germplasm characterisation and genetic diversity analyses.• Development and application of genomic resources, including GWAS, QTL mapping, pangenomics, and comparative genomics.• Genetic and physiological mechanisms underlying tolerance to drought, salinity, extreme temperature, flooding, and nutrient-related stresses.• Natural variation associated with nutritional quality, including proteins, lipids, starch composition, minerals, vitamins, and bioactive compounds.• Integration of genomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics, proteomics, phenomics, and systems biology approaches.• Genomic selection, speed breeding, wild relative introgression, and pre-breeding strategies.• Gene editing and functional validation of candidate genes for stress resilience and nutritional enhancement.• Studies linking genetic diversity to crop improvement, climate adaptation, farmer adoption, and sustainable food systems.We particularly encourage interdisciplinary studies bridging genomics, physiology, breeding, and traditional knowledge systems. Topic editors: Jaykumar Patel, Kusum Khatri, Riyazaddin Mohammed, Gunjan Sharma Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/83599/harnessing-natural-genetic-diversity-in-opportunity-crops-for-climate-resilience-and-nutritional-security