1. Introduction

In agriculture, domestication is the process of a selection of the best trait with increased adaptation or acclimatization of plants. Driven by human activities, the domestication of plants has dramatically changed the development of the ecological condition. Domestication is the outcome of both phenotypic and genomics changes of a species conferred with classical plant breeding. Gradually, a wild plant changed to an elite high yielding cultivar. The domestication started in the Fertile Crescent and the Middle East about 12,000 years ago. Then it occurred in China, eastern North America, Mesoamerica and the Andes, sub-Saharan Africa, Near Oceania, and some other parts of the world (Purugganan and Fuller, 2009; Meyer and Purugganan, 2013). The majority of economically important food and vegetable crops that we now consume or use for other purposes were domesticated from their wild progenitors. In the course of domestication, our ancestors generally selected crops that they required to live. The simple selection of crop plants by our ancestors facilitated the pyramiding of important genes through mutations and recombination that ultimately resulted in cultivated crops. These naturally transformed crops with useful traits were easy to cultivate, breed, store, trade, and disseminate. Interestingly, most of the domesticated crop species have some common traits including seed shattering. Although in rice, the number of spikelets in the spike has remarkably increased the weight of each spikelet remained almost unchanged (Si et al., 2016). However, through the domestication process, the fruit size and weight of eggplants and tomatoes were increased remarkably. (Zhu et al., 2018).

2. Trend and Challenges

Out of approximately 5,500 food crops, we consumed about 70% calories from only 15 domesticated crops. It is estimated that about half or more of all calories consumed is directly contributed by three major kinds of cereal: rice, wheat, and maize (Ross-Ibarra et al., 2007). However, out of 400,000 extant plant species, about 7,000 known species are considered semi-cultivated (orphan crop) (Smykal et al., 2018). These vast natural resources could represent a valuable genetic material for the breeding of future smart crops that could face new challenges posed by global climate change and others. Current crop production is facing several emerging challenges including global warming (Lobell and Gourdji, 2012). Recognized major challenges associated with profitable and sustainable crop production are (i) heavy reliance on chemical inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides; (ii) high requirement of water (for example, production of one kilogram of rice requires 3,000-4,000 liters of non-saline water); (iii) extreme climate changes such as soil salinity, alkalinity, drought, heat, and cold stresses, etc.; (iv) deficiency of soil micronutrients; (v) poor elasticity in increasing the desired yield; and (vi) explosion of the human population, degradation of the environment, and increasing scarcity of cultivable land. To address these challenges, novel approaches are needed. Domestication of orphan or underutilized crop plants using recently developed frontier technologies such as genome editing based on current and emerging knowledge generated by genomics and postgenomics approaches are thought to be one of the promising ways for the improvement of the smart crop for the future smart agriculture (Jinek et al. 2012; Gasiunas et al. 2012; Sedbrook et al. 2014; Lemmon et al. 2018; Li et al. 2018; Zsögön et al. 2018; Haque et al. 2018; Islam 2019; Chen et al. 2007, 2019).

Practically, the crop domestication process is a very slow process. In fact, limited genes are involved in this process and some of these genes are conserved in various domesticated crop species (Asano et al. 2011). These facts allow us to go for targeted red-domestication of de novo domestication. Basically, de novo domestication is a process of identification and introgression or mutation of the targeted genes that ultimately result in domestication followed by the adaptation of the targeted crop cultivars. To attain the global food and nutritional security for achieving some major United Nation’s sustainable development goals (UN-SDGs) such as goal numbers 1 (no poverty) and 2 (zero hunger), we need to unlock the genuine potential of domestication of the wild crop species. Nonetheless, targeted domestication, crop improvement, and the mass cultivation of these crops in a cost-effective manner are essential for the success of these programs. A concerted effort under the joint leadership of Food and Agriculture Organization and Consultative Groups of International Agricultural Research institutions, national agricultural research institutions, and Governments are needed for the research, popularization, and large-scale utilization of the potentials of undomesticated crops for securing the food and nutritional demand of the ever-increasing world population. To achieve this big goal, the benefits of this ambitious program should be well communicated to various stakeholders for timely framing of needed policies for mass adoption ^{[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17]}.