The editorial, authored by Mihail Chervenkov of the University of Forestry and the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Marija Knez of the University of Belgrade, and Teodora Ivanova of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, synthesizes the findings of a multi-article Research Topic spanning nutrition, food science, consumer behavior, and agroecology. Its central claim is that the continued marginalization of these crops reflects a complex interplay of agronomic, socioeconomic, cultural, and market barriers rather than any deficiency in the crops themselves.

The technical case for NUS rests on several pillars. Many possess exceptional nutritional profiles, with high-quality protein, micronutrients, and bioactive compounds that rival or exceed those of staple commodities. Equally important is their adaptation to marginal environments: species that evolved under drought, poor soils, or temperature extremes offer built-in resilience that modern breeding programs often struggle to replicate in elite cultivars of major crops. Long histories of cultivation also mean that traditional knowledge about their agronomy and culinary use survives in many regions, providing a cultural foundation for renewed adoption.

The Research Topic begins with a crop-focused review of rye, presented as a traditional cereal whose nutritional composition and health-promoting properties justify renewed attention in contemporary food systems. Rye exemplifies a broader pattern: crops that were once dietary mainstays in Europe have been displaced by wheat and other commodities, despite documented benefits for metabolic health. The review of peas broadens the perspective to grain legumes, highlighting how a single multifunctional crop can address nutritional quality, environmental sustainability, and economic opportunity at once. Peas provide protein and micronutrients while improving soil fertility through biological nitrogen fixation, supporting sustainable crop rotations, and feeding into expanding plant-based food markets.

A review of chickpeas extends this logic further, emphasizing the crop’s nutritional, health, and culinary potential alongside the reduced environmental footprint of its production. Taken together, the editors argue, these crop-focused reviews provide compelling evidence that underutilized species can simultaneously support nutrition, environmental sustainability, and agricultural resilience. But demonstrating potential, they stress, is only the first step. Translating scientific evidence into dietary practice remains an equally formidable challenge.

That gap is quantified in a contribution comparing dietary recommendations with actual legume consumption patterns across European countries, which reveals persistent discrepancies between what nutrition authorities advise and what populations actually eat. The editors point to recent analyses showing that crops such as rye, pea, and chickpea remain marginal despite their climatic adaptability and recognized nutritional benefits, hindered by limited production, insufficient characterization and promotion of local genetic resources, dependence on imported raw materials, and weak integration into contemporary food markets.

Consumer behavior emerges as a decisive variable. One study explores the behavioral and socioeconomic factors influencing purchasing decisions regarding cereals, finding that health awareness, perceived value, and accessibility remain the key drivers of adoption. For crops such as buckwheat, successful revitalization requires overcoming limited consumer familiarity while addressing the sensory characteristics that shape food preferences. The editors note that recipe development, sensory evaluation, and market-oriented product innovation can measurably improve acceptance of NUS-based foods, demonstrating that revitalization depends on culinary creativity and consumer experience as much as on nutritional quality.

Innovation extends beyond the kitchen. Sustainable processing technologies, including green hydrogen-assisted extraction, are highlighted as a route to environmentally friendly recovery of bioactive compounds from NUS for functional foods and nutraceutical ingredients, adding industrial value to crops that might otherwise never leave the niche market. The scope of the topic also stretches beyond cultivated fields: the editors argue that the concept of underutilized food resources encompasses wild and locally harvested species whose nutritional, cultural, and ecological values remain insufficiently recognized.

Several contributions illustrate this wider frame. An analysis of local edible species traditionally used as wild vegetables on Hainan Island, including the calcium speciation of their tissues, shows how indigenous knowledge contributes to biodiversity conservation while sustaining food traditions. Research in Czechia demonstrates that wild foods follow distinct access pathways, with plant-based foods linked mainly to forest exposure and regulated animal foods shaped more by social networks and procurement systems, underscoring that revitalization requires attention to governance, accessibility, and cultural practice as much as to biology. An overview of millets in India’s Bundelkhand region broadens the lens from individual crops to agricultural landscapes, showing how resilient traditional species can strengthen food and nutrition security under increasingly challenging climatic conditions.

Viewed collectively, the editors identify three overarching themes. First, NUS should be regarded as multifunctional resources capable of simultaneously supporting nutrition, ecosystem services, and rural livelihoods. Second, scientific evidence on nutritional quality alone is insufficient to ensure wider adoption; consumer behavior, market development, food innovation, and sustainable processing are equally important. Third, biodiversity conservation, traditional knowledge, and climate resilience are not separate objectives but complementary dimensions of sustainable food systems. The editorial closes with a call for interdisciplinary collaboration linking plant breeding, characterization of local genetic resources, food technology, behavioral sciences, and policy development, along with greater attention to sustainable value chains, consumer awareness, and enabling policy environments. The message is unambiguous: these are not crops of the past, but strategic resources for building resilient, diversified, and nutrition-sensitive food systems capable of confronting the intertwined challenges of food security and environmental sustainability.

Subject of Research: Revitalization of neglected and underutilized plant species for human nutrition and agroecological resilience

Article Title: Editorial: Revitalization and sustainable utilization of neglected and underutilized plant species (NUS) for enhanced human nutrition and agroecological resilience

Article References: Chervenkov, M., Knez, M., & Ivanova, T. (2026). Editorial: Revitalization and sustainable utilization of neglected and underutilized plant species (NUS) for enhanced human nutrition and agroecological resilience. Frontiers in Nutrition, 13, Article 1980443. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnut.2026.1980443

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fnut.2026.1980443

Keywords: neglected and underutilized species, agrobiodiversity, food security, climate adaptation, nutrition, sustainable agriculture, legumes, rye, buckwheat, millets, consumer behavior, biodiversity conservation

The case for millets rests on an unusual double promise. As C4 cereals of the grass family Poaceae, they photosynthesize efficiently, set grain under terminal drought and on nutrient-poor soils where rice, wheat and maize fail, and require little fertilizer or irrigation. Their grain is another story entirely: finger millet accumulates calcium at levels far above any other cereal, pearl millet is among the richest cereal sources of iron and zinc, and the smaller millets contribute balanced amino-acid profiles, resistant starch and phenolic antioxidants. The grain is gluten-free and has a low glycemic index. Pearl millet and sorghum cultivation has even been reported to emit only about 3218 and 3358 kilograms of carbon-dioxide equivalent per hectare, respectively, giving these crops a comparatively small greenhouse-gas footprint. Since the International Year of Millets in 2023, research on these so-called nutri-cereals has expanded rapidly, and the new review captures that surge with unusual rigor: from 2,065 records screened, roughly 170 primary studies were included, each classified by species, omics layers, integration method and whether candidate genes were actually validated.

The most consequential technical shift may be the move from single reference genomes to graph-based pan-genomes. A single reference captures the gene content of one accession only, while a pan-genome catalogs the presence–absence and structural variation — large insertions, deletions, inversions and copy-number changes — that conventional single-nucleotide polymorphism analysis cannot detect. For foxtail millet, a graph pan-genome built from 110 accessions defined the core and dispensable gene content of the species and linked structural variation to environmental adaptation and C4 biology, establishing it as a genuine model for climate-adaptive breeding. In pearl millet, a pan-genome assembled from chromosome-level genomes uncovered more than 420,000 structural variants and implicated an expanded RWP-RK transcription-factor family in heat tolerance. Three near-gap-free chromosome-level assemblies representing the global heterotic pool now support hybrid breeding, and a chromosome-scale genome identified the strigolactone-biosynthesis gene CLAMT1b as a determinant of susceptibility to Striga hermonthica, the parasitic weed that devastates African yields. Finger millet, an allotetraploid whose complex genome long resisted analysis, now has chromosome-scale assemblies revealing features linked to drought resistance and the crop’s unusually long grain-storage life.

The small millets are beginning to catch up. Proso millet has a graph pan-genome built from 32 long-read assemblies plus resequencing of 516 accessions, identifying 139 loci associated with domestication and agronomic traits. Little millet has a chromosome-scale assembly of its tetraploid genome with resequencing of 300 accessions, which enabled genome-wide association studies for grain micronutrients, including loci tied to high grain iron. Barnyard millet genomes exist for three wild Echinochloa species, with resequencing of 737 accessions. Kodo millet, notably, still lacks a chromosome-scale reference assembly. These sequences are increasingly backed by integrated databases — Milletdb for multiple species, the MDSi platform for foxtail millet anchored on the rapid-cycling xiaomi model, and the Energy Grass Database, which provides the first epigenomic atlas of pearl millet — that let breeders query structural variants, expression patterns and marker–trait associations at a single locus in one place.

On the stress-biology side, the transcriptomic literature converges on a striking conclusion: millet stress tolerance is built largely on a conserved cereal response program. Across drought, salinity, heat, cold and low-potassium stress, differential-expression studies repeatedly recover the abscisic acid signaling core — PYR/PYL/RCAR receptors inhibiting PP2C phosphatases to release SnRK2 kinases — along with reactive oxygen species scavenging by superoxide dismutase, catalase and the ascorbate–glutathione cycle, and accumulation of osmolytes such as proline, glycine betaine and trehalose. Heat engages heat shock factor–heat shock protein networks, salinity adds the SOS pathway and vacuolar sodium–hydrogen exchangers, and low potassium is decoded by CBL–CIPK modules. Because these modules are shared with rice and maize, mechanistic insights transfer readily, and the greater tolerance of millets may arise mainly from differences in the timing, amplitude and tissue specificity of the same pathways. The evidence does not exclude species-specific regulators, but testing that will require time-resolved transcriptomics across species under identical stress regimes.

Crucially, the field has moved from correlation to demonstrated function. The receptor-like kinase DPY1 activates SnRK2 kinases and mediates drought tolerance in Setaria, placing a foxtail millet gene at the head of a validated signaling cascade. The m6A RNA-modification reader SiYTH1 improves drought tolerance by stabilizing transcripts involved in stomatal closure and ROS scavenging. In pearl millet, the plasma-membrane protein PgPM19 aids germination under salinity by dampening ABA biosynthesis, while the transcription factor PgWRKY44, acting as a WRKY–calmodulin module, enhances salt and drought tolerance and, when overexpressed in pearl millet and rice, increases resistance to the blast fungus Magnaporthe grisea. Genome-wide family analyses of bZIP, NAC, AP2/ERF, MYB, NF-Y and heat shock factors have produced a rich catalog of candidates, though the review is careful to note that many have been tested only in Arabidopsis and should be regarded as candidate evidence rather than proof of function in millets themselves.

The sharpest paradox the review identifies lies in nutrition. The traits that most distinguish millets — the exceptional grain calcium of finger millet and the high iron and zinc of pearl millet — are precisely the traits whose molecular machinery is least understood. Biofortification depends on a chain of control points: ZIP and NRAMP transporters take minerals into root cells, nicotianamine and phytosiderophores chelate iron and zinc for long-distance transport, YSL transporters move the complexes through the vasculature, and ferritin, CAX and calcium-ATPase transporters govern storage in the grain. In millets, only the first step has been examined in any depth — fourteen ZIP genes are known in foxtail millet, and mugineic acid pathway genes respond to iron and zinc deficiency in pearl millet. For chelation and grain storage, no functional study in any millet species was found. Rice shows what becomes possible once this machinery is understood: iron and zinc biofortification has been achieved there by expressing nicotianamine synthase together with ferritins — including a pearl millet ferritin — proving the strategy works with millet genes, just not yet in millet plants. No transgenic or genome-edited millet line with higher grain iron, zinc or calcium has been reported.

Genome editing itself, however, has decisively arrived. Foxtail millet now supports a portfolio of validated CRISPR/Cas9 edits: knockout of SiEPF2 altered stomatal density and panicle traits, mutagenesis of SiZAT12 improved drought tolerance without a yield penalty, editing of SiYABBY1 enhanced cleistogamy and increased seed number and size, base editing of SiGS1 conferred glufosinate herbicide resistance, and knockout of alpha-prolamin genes raised the content of functional amino acids — a directly edited gain in grain nutritional quality. The obstacle was never the editing chemistry but the delivery of reagents into millet cells and regeneration of whole plants, and that bottleneck is easing: high-throughput transformation and editing have been reported in pearl millet, a simple seed-piercing protocol works in both pearl and finger millet, and speed-breeding protocols now shorten generation cycles. Prime editing and CRISPR-based gene activation or repression remain unreported in any millet species and are treated as emerging options.

The new frontiers are arriving almost simultaneously. A single-cell atlas of heat-stressed pearl millet leaves has, for the first time, resolved the cell-type-specific heat response of a C4 crop — critical because the mesophyll–bundle-sheath division of photosynthetic labor, which bulk measurements average away, underpins the water- and nitrogen-use efficiency that makes these crops resilient. Combining spatial metal imaging with spatial transcriptomics could finally answer which grain tissues load iron, zinc and calcium. Epigenomics has revealed a prominent role for CHH methylation in pearl millet tissue-specific gene expression, histone deacetylase modules repressing dehydration responses in foxtail millet, and ozone-induced methylation changes inherited across generations — hinting at heritable, non-transgenic routes to resilience. Artificial intelligence is at proof-of-concept stage: interpretable deep-learning frameworks for genomic prediction, structural-variant-informed selection in pearl millet, and smartphone-based biomass estimation all exist, but no breeding program has yet demonstrated a genetic-gain contribution. The review’s roadmap is correspondingly pragmatic: redirect the integrated ionomics and editing approaches already proven for cadmium and selenium toward iron, zinc and calcium; generalize the foxtail millet editing pipeline across species; build closed-loop precision breeding on integration-native data; and bring kodo and barnyard millet to reference-genome parity. The historical case for treating millets as intractable orphans, the authors conclude, no longer holds — the foundations are in place, and the task now is to apply them where they matter most.

Subject of Research: Multi-omics and genome editing for climate resilience and micronutrient biofortification in millet crops

Article Title: Integrative multi-omics and biotechnology for climate resilience and micronutrient biofortification in millets: from trait discovery to precision crop improvement

Article References: Ceasar, S. A., Rathna, A. R. S., & Abdi, G. (2026). Integrative multi-omics and biotechnology for climate resilience and micronutrient biofortification in millets: from trait discovery to precision crop improvement. Current Research in Biotechnology, 12, Article 100426. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crbiot.2026.100426

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1016/j.crbiot.2026.100426

Keywords: millets, multi-omics, genome editing, CRISPR, biofortification, climate resilience, pan-genome, pearl millet, foxtail millet, finger millet, hidden hunger, genomic selection

Codons are the three-letter DNA words that specify amino acids during protein synthesis. Because the genetic code is degenerate, most amino acids can be encoded by several synonymous codons, yet organisms rarely use these synonyms equally. This unevenness, known as codon usage bias, is far from trivial. It influences how efficiently genes are translated into proteins, how quickly chloroplasts can respond to environmental stress, and even how successfully a foreign gene can be expressed if it is engineered into a plant. Understanding which codons a species prefers, and why, therefore has both evolutionary and very practical implications.

The eight species examined span the diversity of cultivated and related millets: barnyard millet (Echinochloa esculenta), finger millet (Eleusine coracana), proso millet (Panicum miliaceum), little millet (Panicum sumatrense), kodo millet (Paspalum scrobiculatum), pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum), foxtail millet (Setaria italica) and sorghum (Sorghum bicolor). All belong to the grass family Poaceae, and all are prized for their nutritional value and resilience to drought, making them increasingly important crops in a warming world. Yet, as the authors note, comprehensive analyses of their chloroplast genomic architecture, and of codon usage in particular, had been lacking.

To fill that gap, the team deployed a battery of standard but powerful bioinformatic measures. The relative synonymous codon usage (RSCU) quantifies how often each codon appears compared with what would be expected if all synonyms were used equally. The effective number of codons (ENC) summarizes how many distinct codons a gene actually draws upon, ranging from 20, meaning extreme bias with only one codon per amino acid, to 61, meaning no bias at all. GC content and GC3, the fraction of guanine and cytosine at the third, wobble position of codons, reveal compositional tendencies. Neutrality plots and parity rule 2 (PR2) analysis then help distinguish between two competing forces: mutational pressure, which pushes base composition in a direction dictated by the chemistry of DNA repair and replication, and natural selection, which favors codons that are translated more efficiently or accurately.

The results were strikingly consistent. Across all eight species, the chloroplast genomes showed a strong preference for codons ending in adenine or thymine. GC3 values hovered around 29 to 30 percent, a clear signature of compositional bias toward AT-richness. Thirty high-frequency codons, defined as those with an RSCU greater than 1, were identified in each genome, and every one of them ended in A or T. Some of these favored codons, such as TGT, CCT and TTA, were shared across all eight species, hinting at a common ancestral or functional logic. But many optimal codons differed from species to species, suggesting that each lineage has fine-tuned its translational machinery in its own way.

The neutrality plot analysis delivered the study’s central evolutionary verdict. If mutation were the dominant force, GC3 would track the overall GC content of genes closely, and the neutrality plot would show a strong diagonal relationship. Instead, the ENC values and neutrality results indicated that natural selection has played the decisive role in shaping codon usage bias in these chloroplast genomes, outweighing mutational pressure. This makes biological sense for an organelle whose genes encode the photosynthetic machinery on which the entire plant depends. Efficient, accurate translation of photosystem proteins, rubisco subunits and ATP synthase components confers a direct fitness advantage, particularly in the harsh, water-limited environments where millets excel.

The PR2, or parity rule 2, analysis added another layer of nuance. Under purely neutral conditions, adenine should equal thymine and guanine should equal cytosine within a DNA strand. Deviations from this parity reveal directional forces at work. In the millet chloroplast genomes, the PR2 plots showed a preference for thymine over adenine and for guanine over cytosine at the third codon position, a pattern consistent with selection acting on translational efficiency rather than with random drift. Correspondence analysis, a multivariate technique that clusters genes according to their codon usage signatures, revealed that most genes share a similar codon usage profile, but a subset of genes deviated noticeably, possibly reflecting differences in gene function, expression level or adaptation to environmental conditions.

Why does this matter beyond evolutionary theory? Chloroplasts have become a favored target for plant genetic engineering. They are maternally inherited in many crops, which reduces gene flow through pollen, they support very high levels of foreign protein expression, and they offer a natural containment strategy. But chloroplast expression depends on the translational preferences of the plastid itself. Codon optimization, rewriting a transgene to match the host’s preferred codons, has been shown in prior work to dramatically enhance expression levels and yield insights into chloroplast translation. The codon preference data assembled for these eight millets provide exactly the reference table that synthetic biologists would need when designing transgenes for millet improvement, whether the goal is stress tolerance, enhanced photosynthesis or nutritional fortification.

The study also contributes to phylogenetics. Codon usage patterns can carry historical signal, and comparative chloroplast genome analyses across the Poaceae have already been used to resolve relationships among grass lineages. By documenting shared and species-specific optimal codons, the researchers have generated a dataset that can inform both evolutionary reconstructions and the identification of conserved regulatory features in millet chloroplasts. Given that millets are increasingly promoted as climate-resilient staples for future food security, any tool that accelerates their improvement is welcome.

For a crop group often described as orphan grains, overlooked by mainstream breeding programs despite their nutritional virtues, this work represents a meaningful step into the genomic era. It confirms that the chloroplast genomes of millets are not passive repositories of sequence but actively curated libraries, their codon choices sculpted by selection to keep the photosynthetic engine running smoothly under stress. As gene editing and chloroplast transformation mature, the humble codon table may turn out to be one of the most valuable things these ancient grains can teach us.

Subject of Research: Codon usage bias in the chloroplast genomes of eight millet species

Article Title: Comprehensive Analysis of Codon Usage Bias Pattern in Chloroplast Genomes of Eight Millet Species

Article References: Nishanth, J. B., Balaji, R., Govindhan, G., & Somasundaram, S. (2026). Comprehensive Analysis of Codon Usage Bias Pattern in Chloroplast Genomes of Eight Millet Species. Indian Journal of Genetics and Plant Breeding, 86(2), 177-189. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44489-026-00018-z

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44489-026-00018-z

Keywords: codon usage bias, chloroplast genome, millets, RSCU, effective number of codons, GC3 content, neutrality plot, natural selection, translational selection, codon optimization, Poaceae, plant biotechnology

MicroRNAs, or miRNAs, are single-stranded RNA molecules typically 21 to 24 nucleotides in length. Although they do not encode proteins, they perform a crucial regulatory function by binding to messenger RNA targets and either cleaving them or blocking their translation. In doing so, they fine-tune the expression of transcription factors, hormone signaling components and transporter genes that govern virtually every aspect of plant life, from root architecture and flowering time to drought tolerance and grain filling. A single miRNA can regulate multiple genes within the same pathway, which makes these molecules extraordinarily powerful levers for crop improvement. Environmental conditions can reshape miRNA expression profiles, and in turn the plant’s stress responses, offering a dynamic regulatory layer that breeders have only begun to exploit.

The review, led by Kasanaboina Krishna of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics and colleagues, synthesizes evidence from across the major cereals and emerging millet studies to build a millet-focused regulatory framework. The authors distinguish between conserved grass-wide miRNA modules and millet-specific candidates, and they are candid about the state of the field: most millet miRNA research to date has been limited to computational prediction and expression profiling, while rigorous functional validation remains scarce. Degradome sequencing evidence, tissue-specific regulatory maps and field-relevant genotype-by-environment analyses are still largely missing, meaning that many of the most exciting candidates remain hypotheses rather than established tools.

Nevertheless, the evidence that does exist is compelling. In foxtail millet, miR394 has been shown to positively regulate drought resistance, with upregulation after treatment with methyl jasmonate, ethephon, salicylic acid and abscisic acid, and improved germination rates and root lengths in response. A member of the miR396 family, SimiR396d, targets the growth-regulating factor gene SiGRF1, and its overexpression enhances both root growth and drought tolerance, directly linking miRNA-mediated developmental regulation to stress adaptation. In pearl millet, one of the most drought-tolerant cereals known, researchers identified 61 novel miRNAs under high vapor pressure deficit, with families including miR167, miR172, miR396 and miR399 implicated in root physiology and abiotic stress responses. Sorghum studies have revealed 80 individual miRNAs responding to drought, heat and combined stress, including eight novel stress-responsive families.

Salinity tolerance offers another striking example. In finger millet, the Eco-miR169–EcNF-YA13 regulatory module has been identified as a key determinant of dehydration and salinity tolerance; the transcription factor EcNF-YA13 supports stress tolerance but is suppressed by Eco-miR169, suggesting that modulating this miRNA could relieve the repression and enhance tolerance. Earlier work in the same species identified 48 conserved and 35 novel salinity-responsive miRNAs, with several families upregulated more than tenfold in tolerant genotypes. In pearl millet, small RNA sequencing revealed 95 salinity-responsive miRNAs targeting 448 genes, many involved in auxin responses, hinting that miRNA-mediated hormone regulation underpins the crop’s remarkable salt resilience.

Beyond stress tolerance, miRNAs appear central to the nutritional traits that make millets so valuable as nutri-cereals. Finger millet is prized for its calcium content, pearl millet for iron and zinc, kodo millet for dietary fiber and phenolics, and fonio for sulfur-containing amino acids. Yet the direct links between specific miRNAs and grain micronutrient accumulation remain under-investigated. One notable exception comes from pearl millet, where pgl-miR159 was identified as a candidate associated with iron metabolism during a broader search for grain iron and zinc genes. In rice, high-iron transgenic lines showed downregulation of root-specific miRNAs that in turn upregulated key transporters such as OsYSL15, OsFRO2 and OsIRT1, boosting iron and zinc uptake. The review argues that identifying orthologous transporter–miRNA modules in millets could provide a mechanistic framework for biofortification, provided the interactions are experimentally validated.

The translational toolkit for moving from candidate miRNAs to improved cultivars is now substantial. The authors propose a roadmap combining tissue- and stage-resolved miRNA atlases with target validation through degradome sequencing, RNA Ligase-Mediated Rapid Amplification of cDNA Ends and reporter assays. Functional intervention platforms include short tandem target mimics, which sequester endogenous miRNAs to relieve repression of beneficial target genes; artificial miRNAs, which deliver highly specific gene knockdowns with minimal off-target effects; and CRISPR/Cas-mediated editing of miRNA loci, promoters or target recognition sites. Proof-of-concept studies in other cereals show the power of these approaches: editing the miR396 binding sites in rice OsGRF4 and OsGRF8 derepressed growth and boosted grain size, while CRISPR-induced mutations in the miR156 recognition element of wheat TaSPL13 improved grain number, size and architecture.

Integration with breeding pipelines is the critical next step. miRNA-derived molecular markers, first developed in Brassica and rice, capture regulatory variation rather than merely neutral structural differences, linking markers directly to traits such as stress tolerance and yield stability. In foxtail millet, researchers designed 66 primer pairs from conserved pre-miRNA sequences with high cross-genera transferability, underscoring their promise as functional genotyping tools. The review also highlights the potential of machine learning and digital miRNA twins, computational models trained on sequence features and expression data to predict stress-responsive miRNAs and simulate how edited or introgressed miRNA modules would perform across drought cycles, heatwaves and nutrient-poor soils before any field trial. Embedding miRNA target interactions into crop simulation platforms could dramatically shorten breeding cycles for climate-resilient varieties.

The regulatory and ecological dimensions are not ignored. India’s 2022 guidelines exempt site-directed nuclease 1 and 2 genome-edited plants from GMO-style environmental risk assessment once vector sequences are segregated, opening a practical pathway for non-transgenic miRNA edits. At the same time, the authors note that plant miRNAs can move within and between organisms, a consideration for environmental safety even in cisgenic edits. Benchmarks for nutritional outcomes already exist: Indian biofortified pearl millet targets of at least 42 milligrams of iron and 32 milligrams of zinc per kilogram of grain, achieved without sacrificing yield. Rapid screening systems built around the model grass Setaria viridis, including spike-dip transformation, protoplast assays and foxtail mosaic virus vectors for virus-induced gene silencing, could accelerate functional validation before the best constructs move into stable millet genotypes for multi-environment testing.

The broader message is one of urgency and opportunity. Millets already possess C4 photosynthesis, deep root systems, compact stature and strong antioxidant defenses that allow them to thrive where major cereals fail. Their inherent micronutrient richness makes them ideal testbeds for miRNA-guided climate-smart breeding. What is missing is the systematic functional validation that would transform descriptive miRNA catalogues into experimentally confirmed regulatory networks. If the roadmap laid out in this review is followed, building comprehensive miRNA atlases, mining landrace and wild-relative diversity for novel miRNA alleles, deploying CRISPR and target mimicry tools, and integrating validated miRNA-trait associations into genomic selection models, the humble millet could become a global model for genetic resilience, nutritional density and smart agriculture, delivering climate-proof, micronutrient-dense grain to the farmers and consumers who need it most.

Subject of Research: MicroRNA regulatory networks controlling climate resilience and nutritional traits in millet crops

Article Title: Harnessing microRNA regulatory networks for engineering climate resilience and nutritional enhancement in millets

Article References: Krishna, K., Habyarimana, E., Jamedar, H. R., VG, I. L., Chavan, S., Prasad, B. V. V., Mohan, Y. C., Edukondalu, B., & Ceasar, S. A. (2026). Harnessing microRNA regulatory networks for engineering climate resilience and nutritional enhancement in millets. Stress Biology, 6(1), Article 57. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44154-026-00332-2

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44154-026-00332-2

Keywords: microRNAs, millets, climate resilience, drought tolerance, salinity stress, biofortification, CRISPR genome editing, foxtail millet, pearl millet, finger millet, nutritional quality, molecular breeding