Increasing vulnerability of plants to a variety of stresses such as drought, salt and extreme temperatures poses a global threat to sustained growth and productivity of major crops. Of these stresses, drought represents a considerable threat to plant growth and development. In view of this, developing staple food cultivars with improved drought tolerance emerges as the most sustainable solution toward improving crop productivity in a scenario of climate change. In parallel, unraveling the genetic architecture and the targeted identification of molecular networks using modern “OMICS” analyses, that can underpin drought tolerance mechanisms, is urgently required. Importantly, integrated studies intending to elucidate complex mechanisms can bridge the gap existing in our current knowledge about drought stress tolerance in plants. It is now well established that drought tolerance is regulated by several genes, including transcription factors (TFs) that enable plants to withstand unfavorable conditions, and these remain potential genomic candidates for their wide application in crop breeding. These TFs represent the key molecular switches orchestrating the regulation of plant developmental processes in response to a variety of stresses. The current review aims to offer a deeper understanding of TFs engaged in regulating plant’s response under drought stress and to devise potential strategies to improve plant tolerance against drought.

No abstract

Combining ability study was carried out in a 10 x 10 diallel set of dry beans (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) for seed yield and its component characters. The 45 F1s generated by crossing ten diverse lines and their parents were evaluated in Randomized Block Design (RBD) in two replications at three locations during Kharif, 2008. Analysis of variance revealed that both gca and sca were influenced by environments, which suggested that studies be conducted over environments to get unbiased estimates. The sca x environment interaction was greater than gca x environment interaction for most of the traits. The relative magnitude of gca and sca variation indicated that greater magnitude of sca variances for all the traits, indicating greater importance of non additive gene action for the inheritance of these traits. SKUA-R-607 and SKUA-R-608 showed high combining ability for seed yield and yield attributing traits. The most promising crosses in order of merit for seed yield were Shalimar Rajmash 1 x SKUA-R-607, SKUA-R-608 x SKUA-R-106 and Shalimar Rajmash -1 x SKUA- R-612. These promising crosses may be improved through conventional breeding methods such as biparental mating and diallel selective meeting, thereafter followed by pedigree method of selection, so as the tight linkage, if any, may be broken and transgressive segregants may be isolated. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/sja.v10i2.18324 SAARC J. Agri., 10(2): 61-69 (2012)

No abstract

No abstract