World Food Crops Breeding project in UF dedicated to research on how small grain crops like wheat, oats and Triticale can be improved through plant breeding to increase crop productivity in stressful environments. Due to the effect of climate change, it is very important for plant breeding programs to understand how these crops respond to high temperature and variable water stress environments. There is a tremendous need to know how this information can be used in developing varieties that are better adapted to abiotic stress in South-East USA and other parts of the world.
Increased temperature and variable water availability are major limitations to food crops production and world food security. How major food crop like wheat can withstand against those environmental limitations and how this information can be used to develop new varieties that are adapted to these conditions is major research goal for the breeding program. In addition of developing stress tolerant varieties, the breeding program will also dedicate to find genes, source of genes and characters that will contribute to the tolerance of the these stresses
