The plant breeding and genetics group led by Professor Poland at KAUST is focused on the formidable questions of how to develop climate resilient crops to address the grand challenges of food security in the coming generations. Professor Poland leads work to better understand the dynamic genomes of plants and utilize this genomic information to increase genetic gain in crop breeding. His group has active research in quantitative genetics and genetic diversity studies on important crops including date palm and wheat, sesame, crop wild relatives, and wild species with neodomestication potential using association genetics, genomics, and high-throughput phenotyping. In collaboration with public breeding programs, Professor Poland is implementing the use of genomic selection and high-throughput phenotyping to accelerate breeding in wheat, intermediate wheatgrass, and other species. Looking at the grand challenges facing agriculture, the lab is also focused on species with extreme stress tolerance such as saltgrass (Distichlis spp.) that can grow in salinity at the level of seawater. Neodomestication, breeding, and cultivation of such species could provide a trajectory change for agriculture in the face of hotter climates and rapidly shrinking water reserves.