BackgroundBread wheat is one of the most important crops in the world. Its domestication coincides with the beginning of agriculture and since then, it has been constantly under selection by humans. Its breeding has followed millennia of cultivation, sometimes with unintended selection on adaptive traits, and later by applying intentional but empirical selective pressures. For more than one century, wheat breeding has been based on science, and has been constantly evolving due to on farm agronomy and breeding program improvements. The aim of this work is to briefly review wheat breeding, with emphasis on the current advances.DiscussionImproving yield potential, resistance/tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses, and baking quality, have been priorities for breeding this cereal, however, new objectives are arising, such as biofortification enhancement. The narrow genetic diversity and complexity of its genome have hampered the breeding progress and the application of biotechnology. Old approaches, such as the introgression from relative species, mutagenesis, and hybrid breeding are strongly reappearing, motivated by an accumulation of knowledge and new technologies. A revolution has taken place regarding the use of molecular markers whereby thousands of plants can be routinely genotyped for thousands of loci. After 13 years, the wheat reference genome sequence and annotation has finally been completed, and is currently available to the scientific community. Transgenics, an unusual approach for wheat improvement, still represents a potential tool, however it is being replaced by gene editing, whose technology along with genomic selection, speed breeding, and high-throughput phenotyping make up the most recent frontiers for future wheat improvement.Final considerationAgriculture and plant breeding are constantly evolving, wheat has played a major role in these processes and will continue through decades to come.

中文翻译：

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面包小麦：植物驯化和育种的榜样

背景面包小麦是世界上最重要的作物之一。它的驯化恰逢农业的开始，从那时起，它一直受到人类的选择。它的育种经历了数千年的栽培，有时是对适应性特征的无意选择，后来是通过故意但经验性的选择压力。一个多世纪以来，小麦育种一直以科学为基础，并且由于农场农学和育种计划的改进而不断发展。这项工作的目的是简要回顾小麦育种，重点是当前的进展。讨论提高产量潜力、对生物和非生物胁迫的抗性/耐受性以及烘焙质量一直是育种这种谷物的优先事项，然而，新的目标正在出现, 例如生物强化增强。其基因组的狭窄遗传多样性和复杂性阻碍了育种进展和生物技术的应用。在知识和新技术积累的推动下，诸如相关物种的基因渗入、诱变和杂交育种等旧方法正在重新出现。一场关于使用分子标记的革命已经发生，因此可以对数千种植物进行常规基因分型，以获得数千个基因座。时隔 13 年，小麦参考基因组序列和注释终于完成，目前可供科学界使用。转基因，一种不寻常的小麦改良方法，仍然是一种潜在的工具，但它正在被基因编辑所取代，基因编辑技术与基因组选择、快速育种、