Abstract Dryland agriculture faces escalating constraints from water deficit, heat stress and soil salinity, necessitating the harnessing of adaptive diversity beyond modern wheat cultivars. Wild wheat relatives (WWRs) within the Triticeae harbour key dryland-adaptive traits, including deep, plastic root systems, osmotic adjustment, Na + /K + homeostasis and heat-responsive photosynthesis, all of which are critical for maintaining yield stability under water-limited conditions. This review synthesizes recent advances in pangenomics, genome-wide association studies, speed introgression (genome-scale introgression under speed breeding) and genome editing, which enable more precise mining and deployment of WWR alleles while reducing linkage drag and improving selection efficiency. Importantly, we integrate biological constraints with conservation and policy considerations, highlighting how fragmented ex situ representation, limited phenotyping capacity in dryland regions, and complex access-and-benefit-sharing frameworks under the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Nagoya Protocol, and the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture constrain the practical utilization of WWR diversity. By identifying underexplored WWR and allied taxa (e.g., Aegilops searsii and Elymus spp.), priority trait categories, and target dryland agroecosystems, this review provides a unified conservation-to-breeding framework that advances beyond previous syntheses and repositions WWR from genetic reservoirs to deployable resources for climate-resilient wheat improvement.
Rehman et al. (Tue,) studied this question.