Wheat, in conjunction with rice and maize, constitutes one of the three most significant staple crops worldwide, sustaining over 40% of the global population. In Korea, the annual per capita wheat consumption exceeds 30 kg, totaling approximately 4 million tons nationwide. However, more than 95% of this demand is met through imports, resulting in a meager self-sufficiency rate of approximately 0.7%, raising concerns regarding supply stability and price fluctuations. Enhancing wheat self-sufficiency in Korea requires addressing yield reductions caused by abiotic stressors, including elevated temperatures, drought, cold damage and pre-harvest sprouting induced by climate change, as well as biotic stressors such as Fusarium head blight. The development of high-quality wheat varieties with superior processing characteristics that satisfy consumer demands is crucial. This study provides critical insights for future research on the development of novel wheat cultivars in Korea. It reviews the current state of wheat cultivation and production, environmental and biological factors affecting growth, compositional elements influencing quality, domestic cultivars developed through conventional crossbreeding currently in commercial distribution, and contemporary breeding trends, with particular emphasis on novel breeding technologies, such as biotechnology.

New Breeding Technology (NBT) refers to gene editing technologies that are used to develop crop plants with beneficial traits, from biotic/abiotic resistance to nutritional enhancement, including zinc finger nucleases (ZFN), transcription activator-like effector nucleases, clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/CRISPR-associated protein 9, meganucleases, and oligo directed mutagenesis. A total of 1,119 valid NBT patents were analyzed in this study to examine global trends in the patent and market expansion strategies for major patent applicants. Based on the claims specified, valid patents in each patent office were analyzed through the applicant’s country of origin, field of technology, and plant/crop species. Patents claiming applications of CRISPR-based technology to major crop plants, including rice, corn, wheat, tomato, and canola, have rapidly increased in the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) since 2013. The patent family size (PFS) can be used as an indicator of intellectual property (IP)-based market expansion strategies and target markets of interests of patent applicants. Many university- and research-oriented institution Chinese applicants showed low PFS (2.1) because they filed patents mostly in CNIPA. In contrast, high PFS of US and German (DE) applicants such as Corteva Agriscience (US), KWS SAAT AG (DE), Cellectics (FR), and Syngenta Participations AG (CH) represented their active strategies for global gene-edited crop market expansion. Corteva Agriscience (US, 238 patents) was the global leader in patents using NBT, ranging from ZFN to CRISPR-based technologies applied to most major crops, including corn, soybean, and wheat.