* Presenting and corresponding author: jp.cohan@arvalis.fr

Wheat production in Europe is facing major challenges: improving its resilience against climate change, developing more efficient integrated diseases, pests and weeds management strategies relying less on pesticides and, adapting its quality criteria to new consumers demands. Innovative cultivars are needed to address all these issues. Consequently, wheat breeding programs must be managed carefully to integrate the priority traits to achieve these objectives.

As a starting point to define these traits, an unprecedented genetic progress study has been conducted in France using 40 years of data from the cultivars assessment trial networks and related research programs. Due to its geographical positioning, France presents contrasted cropping environments, allowing us to extrapolate some general conclusions to other European countries.

Yield genetic progress has been estimated at 0.054 and 0.042 t.ha-1.year-1 for bread and durum wheat respectively, stable since the early 1980s. This progress is significant even in constraint cropping environments and is mainly based on a higher number of grain.m-2. Given the increasing occurrence of late heat and water stress, strengthen the grain filling capacity of wheat should now be a priority for breeding programs.

For 40 years, the average resistance of cultivars against the main wheat foliar diseases has improved. For brown and yellow rusts, this progress is particularly challenged by the rapid evolution of pathogen populations. In 2005, more than 70% of the bread wheat French cultivation area was cultivated with medium sensitive and highly sensitive cultivars for Septoria, while in 2022, more than 70% of the bread wheat French cultivation area was cultivated with medium resistant and highly resistant cultivars for this disease.

The main objectives of breeding programs should be to strengthen the durability of disease resistances by rapidly stacking different types of resistance genes against major pathogens.

Wheat quality traits often present a strong link with nitrogen use efficiency (NUE). For bread wheat, NUE has continuously been improved since the beginning of the 1980s, particularly its N utilization efficiency component.

Thanks to the enhancement of the Grain Protein Deviation, the decrease of grain protein concentration under the effect of yield progress has been limited.

For durum wheat, vitreosity index has been improved, despite the decrease of grain protein concentration due to the yield progress. High NUE should be kept as a target in breeding program to address both production and climate change mitigation challenges, as well as quality traits to respond to the diversified consumer demands.