Triticeae cereals are among the most important crop plants grown worldwide and being used for animal feed, food and beverages. Although breeding efforts evolved over the last ten thousand years our today's crop plants, biotechnological methods would help to speed up the process and incorporate traits impossible by conventional breeding. The main research topics were related to cover the future demand on our agricultural practices to supply sufficient food for a growing world population. Target traits are resistances against viral and fungal diseases, improvement of water and nitrogen use efficiency, to tackle plant architecture, both below and aboveground and to develop varieties that could grow on dry or salty locations. Other applications are considering accumulation of useful compounds or decreasing allergenicity. This review will summarize methods to generate the material including a section how genome engineering using gRNA/Cas (CRISPR/Cas) technology could further improve the methodology and will give an overview about recent and future applications.

小麦是世界上最重要的农作物之一，被用于动物饲料，食品和饮料。尽管育种工作是在我们今天的农作物的近一万年中发展起来的，但生物技术方法将有助于加快这一过程，并纳入常规育种无法实现的特征。主要研究主题涉及满足我们对农业实践的未来需求，以便为不断增长的世界人口提供充足的食物。目标性状是对病毒和真菌疾病的抵抗力，对水和氮的利用效率的提高，应对地下和地上的植物结构以及开发可以在干燥或咸水地区生长的品种的特征。其他应用正在考虑有用化合物的积累或降低过敏性。