Wheat Nutraceutomics: Breeding, Genomics, Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology

Wheat is humanity's second most important cereal crop, consumed widely in developed and developing countries and constituting a major source of protein and energy, especially in the developing world. Wheat grain, including the bran and endosperm, furnishes diverse macro-and micronutrients required for the normal physiological and biochemical functioning of the human body. Dietary deficiencies of micronutrients such as iron (Fe) and zinc (Zn) lead to severe health consequences in children below 5 years of age and in pregnant women and lactating mothers. Increasing the nutritional value of wheat grain can largely address micronutrient malnutrition for the world's growing population. The recent availability of wheat genome sequence library in the public domain, together with the expanding horizon of next-generation sequencing, and genome editing technologies, holds great promise for trait-based molecular breeding to develop nutrient-rich wheat cultivars. Modern biofortification techniques, including conventional breeding, transgenics, and agronomic biofortification, have already increased wheat grain nutrient content and the nutrient-rich biofortified wheat cultivars grown over 2 million ha area in South Asia & Latim America. This chapter discusses the importance of wheat in the human diet, wheat grain's nutritional composition, and advances in molecular and transgenic and genome editing approaches to develop health-related traits in wheat grain.