This brief historical review focuses on durum wheat domestication and breeding in the Mediterranean region. Important milestones in durum wheat breeding programs across the countries of the Mediterranean basin before and after the Green Revolution are discussed. Additionally, the main achievements of the classical breeding methodology are presented using a comparison of old and new cultivars. Furthermore, current breeding goals and challenges are analyzed. An overview of classical breeding methods in combination with current molecular techniques and tools for cultivar development is presented. Important issues of seed quality are outlined, focusing on protein and characteristics that affect human health and are connected with the consumption of wheat end-products.

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General Background Plant pathogens, crop hosts and the environmentThe study of plant disease often begins with a discussion of the "plant disease triangle".The three legs of the triangle -host, pathogen, and environment -must be present and interact appropriately for plant disease to result. If any of the 3 factors is altered, changes in the progression of a disease epidemic can occur. The major predicted results of climate changeincreases in temperature, moisture and CO 2 -can impact all three legs of the plant disease triangle in various ways. Precisely predicting the impact of climate change on plant disease is tricky business.

Bread wheat landraces were an important source of biodiversity used in agriculture before the widespread adoption of high-yielding commercial cultivars adapted to high inputs. Could future agriculture exploit these landraces in different cropping systems in organic or lower-input environments? A two-year field trial was conducted to evaluate grain yield, agronomic performance, and grain quality of bread wheat landraces under different cropping systems, including low-input/organic/conventional environments. Significant variability was found for almost all characteristics among landraces, which makes landraces valuable sources of genetic variation for breeding programs aimed at achieving high and consistent production as well as high-quality products in low-input/organic environments. Additionally, landraces play a crucial role in expanding the genetic diversity of cultivated bread wheat and mitigating biodiversity erosion, thereby enabling crops to better withstand the challenges of low-input/organic agriculture. The landrace “Xilokastro Lamias” had the highest yield among the landraces evaluated in the first growing season (2.65 t·ha−1) and one of the highest yields (2.52 t·ha−1) of all genotypes in the second growing season, which shows promising potential as a starting material in breeding programs targeting high and stable yields. GGE biplot analysis identified the landrace ”Xilokastro Lamias”, along with commercial cultivars “Yecora E” and “Panifor”, as suitable candidates for direct use in low-input/organic wheat farming systems to achieve enhanced productivity. In the conventional environment (C2-IPGRB), commercial cultivars showed the highest values (3.09 to 3.41 ton·ha−1). Of the landraces, only the X4 showed a high GY (3.10 ton·ha−1) while the other landraces had ~33–85% lower yield. In the organic environment (O2-IPGRB), the highest productivity was found in the commercial cultivar X5 and the landrace X4. Commercial cultivars X8 and X7 showed ~68% reduction in GY in the organic environment compared to the conventional, while this reduction was half for the landraces. Finally, the reduction in grain yield between conventional and organic environments was observed to be 45% for commercial cultivars, while it was only half for landraces. This finding confirms the adaptability of landraces to organic agriculture.

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To investigate the effect of 1BL.1RS wheat-rye chromosomal translocation on bread wheat yield, four and six commercial cultivars with and without translocation, respectively, were evaluated in the field. In addition to yield, three agronomic traits were measured: days to heading, plant height and 1000 kernel weight. Experiments were performed in two different locations (one cold and one dry) for three years at each location, and four replications were conducted. Despite observed differences between the genotypes, translocation was not found to produce an advantage. Even though the two cultivars did not differ, the one without translocation was ranked first and the one with translocation was ranked second. The cultivar Kavkaz/Cgn, one of the donors for translocation, was ranked eighth, and the fourth cultivar with translocation was ranked last. Based on these results, we studied the genotypes in each location to determine whether translocation produced any adaptation effect. The results revealed that three of the four cultivars with translocation performed well in the cold environment, and only one performed well in the dry area. One of the cultivars without translocation exceeded the yield of the cultivars with translocation. In the dry area, five of the non-translocated cultivars performed as well as the translocated ones. Thus, it could be concluded that translocation had no obvious positive effect on yield. Similar results were recorded for the other three traits. Further research with more environments and more sophisticated analysis is needed to achieve more accurate conclusions.

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This study assessed the variations in grain yield (GY) and protein content (PC) within two commercial durum wheat cultivars (Svevo and Maestrale) and evaluated their responses to intra-cultivar selection for both traits. We investigated whether the variations are exploitable and could result in concurrent GY and PC upgrading. The experiments were conducted in the IPBGR, Thessaloniki, Greece (2018–2020). The first year included two identical honeycomb design trials under ultra-low plant density (ULD) where the divergent selection was applied based on single plant yield and protein content. In the second year, progeny evaluation under typical crop density (TCD) for GY and PC occurred in a randomized complete block (RCB) and with three replications for each cultivar selected line. This revealed considerable variation within already improved commercial cultivars. Single-plant selection for GY and PC simultaneously resulted in: (a) one high-yielding line that significantly outperformed the original cultivar Svevo while maintaining high PC, and (b) two high-grain PC lines that outperformed the original cultivar Maestrale significantly while maintaining high GY. ULD allowed efficient selection for GY and PC simultaneously within narrow gene pools by maximizing phenotypic expression and differentiation among individual plants.