Abstract

The level of the genetic diversity is pivotal for world food security and survival of human civilization on earth. Historically, humans exploited plant species for their livelihoods that resulted in domestication of many of them as improved cultivars to produce food for the better supply of the human diet [1]. Presently, out of 150 plant species cultivated in agriculture, twelve provide about 75% of human food and four produce 50% of human diet [2]. According to Food and Health Organization report,∼ 800 million people in the developing countries are suffering from food deficiency [3] that underlies an attention to improve agricultural production to eliminate or, at least, reduce the feeding problems. The narrow genetic base of modern crop cultivars is the serious obstacle to sustain and improve crop productivity due to rapid vulnerability of genetically uniform cultivars by potentially new biotic and abiotic stresses [4]. However, plant germplasm resources worldwide, comprising of wild plant species, modern cultivars, and their crop wild relatives, are the important reservoirs of natural genetic variations, originated from a number of historical genetic events as a respond to environmental stresses and selection through crop domestication [1, 5]. The efficient exploiting these ex situ conserved genetic diversities is vital to overcome future problems associated with narrowness of genetic base of modern cultivars. However, many agriculturally important variations such as productivity and quality, tolerance to environmental stresses, and some of forms of disease resistance are controlled by polygenes and “multifactorial” that greatly depends on genetic× environmental …