Societal Impact Statement The global food system faces growing pressure from climate change, biodiversity loss, and rising nutritional demands. Agriculture has increased yields but reduced crop diversity, flavor, and nutritional quality, leaving societies vulnerable and dependent on a narrow set of staple species. Here, we explore how local wild plants, long dismissed as weeds or trait donors, could become climate‐resilient, nutritious crops. By synthesizing knowledge on their biology with tools that accelerate improvement, we highlight pathways to support local food production, diversify diets, and strengthen system resilience. Reimagining these overlooked species offers practical opportunities for sustainable agriculture that benefits people and the planet. Summary Wild plant species, long excluded from mainstream agriculture, hold untapped potential for building resilient and diverse food systems. Today's agrifood landscape is constrained by a narrow selection of high‐input, genetically uniform crops, perpetuating biodiversity loss, environmental degradation, and vulnerability to climate change. Expanding beyond this limited genetic base is no longer optional but essential, requiring us to rethink what future crops can be and where they originate. In this viewpoint, we argue that the next generation of climate‐resilient, nutritious crops may come not from improving current staples but from directly domesticating local wild species. Emerging tools, including plant omics, artificial intelligence, gene editing, and speed breeding, now make this vision achievable. By combining these technologies with knowledge of antinutritional compounds and agronomic challenges, we outline a roadmap for transforming wild plants into viable crops. We highlight halophytes and Amaranthaceae species, especially Salicornia and Chenopodium album , as promising examples due to their nutritional value and adaptation to marginal environments. By bridging advanced technologies with neglected local biodiversity, we argue the future of sustainable agriculture lies not in incremental gains to current crops, but in reimagining the wild plants, we have long overlooked.
Melia et al. (Sun,) studied this question.