Preface

Cereals, Grains: Importance, Challenges and Future Prospects.

Cereal crops such as maize, rice, wheat, sorghum, and barley were the foundation of human civilization. Not only are they important sources of human and animal feed but they are also useful for fuel production. Over the past 50 years, cereals have emerged as rapidly evolving crops because of new technologies and advances in agronomy, breeding, biotechnology, genetics, and so on. Population growth and climate change have led to new challenges, among which are feeding the growing global population and mitigating adverse effects on the environment. One way to deal with these issues is through sustainable cereal production. This book discusses ways to achieve sustainable production of cereals via agronomy, breeding, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics. Chapters review research, examine challenges, and present future prospects in the field.

I would like to thank all the contributing authors for their outstanding efforts and timely work in producing such fine chapters. I greatly appreciate all the reviewers for their helpful comments. I would also like to thank the staff at IntechOpen, particularly Sara Gojević-Zrnić and Lucija Tomicic-Dromgool, for their assistance, advice, and encouragement during the development of this book. Lastly, I express my heartfelt thanks to my family for their love, encouragement, and vision that unveiled in me the desire to reach the highest mountain in everything I do.

> **Aakash Kumar Goyal, Ph.D.**  CEO, RAYN Cultivation Inc., Edmonton, Canada

Section 1 Breeding
