Adapting Cereal Grain Crops to Drought Stress: 2020 and Beyond

Abstract

Among other environmental instabilities, drought stress is the primary limitation to cereal crops growth, development and productivity. In the context of continuing global climate change, breeding of drought resistant crop cultivars is the most economical, effective and sustainable strategy for adapting the crop production system and ensuring food security for the growing human population. Additionally, there is need for improving management practices. Whereas conventional breeding has sustained crop productivity gains in the past century, modern technological advancements have revolutionized our identification of important drought tolerance genes and underlying mechanisms, and accelerated new cultivar development. Large-scale high throughput sequencing, phenotyping, 'omics' and systems biology, as well as marker assisted and quantitative trait loci mapping based breeding approaches have offered significant insights into crop drought stress tolerance and provided some new tools for crop improvement. Despite this significant progress in elucidating the mechanisms underlying drought tolerance, considerable challenges remain and our understanding of the crop drought tolerance mechanisms is still abstract. In this chapter, therefore, we highlight current progress in the identification of drought tolerance genes and underlying mechanisms, as well as their practical applications. We then offer a holistic approach for cereal crops adaptation to future climate change exacerbated drought stress.

Plants’ Physio-Biochemical and Phyto-Hormonal Responses to Alleviate the Adverse Effects of Drought Stress: A Comprehensive Review

“…Using marker-assisted selection (MAS) technology, some DNA markers have been linked to favorable QTLs [145]. Because of advancements in next-generation sequencing, the synthesis of many genetic markers, such as single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) [146]; and insertion-deletions (InDels), provides a realistic option for increasing drought tolerance in cereal crops [147]. Drought-responsive genes and QTLs have recently been discovered in wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) crop, revealing that QTLs have been the focus of research over the last decade to identify the gene loci governing crops' adaptive response to drought stress [148].…”

Omics-Facilitated Crop Improvement for Climate Resilience and Superior Nutritive Value

“…Therefore, this technique could be an indispensible tool to promote high-throughput genotyping and speed breeding of climate-smart groundnut (and possibly other legume) crop cultivars. Further, improved crop management practices that help maintain stabilized yields under resource constrained environments, including conservation agriculture and the use of melatonin to enhance crop stress tolerance will remain more relevant ( Fahad et al, 2017 ; Zenda et al, 2020 ). This holistic approach to crop improvement for resilience to climate change and higher nutritive value is summarized in Figure 2 .…”

Drought Stress in Cereals – A Review

“…Thanks to the advances in next-generation sequencing, the identification of major QTLs regulating specific drought responses is successful and via the development of large numbers of genetic markers such as single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and insertion-deletions (InDels) it represents an efficient way to improve drought tolerance in cereal crops (Kole et al 2015). Studies reporting major drought-responsive genes and QTLs in wheat have recently been published (Choudhary et al 2019;Khadka et al 2020;Pang et al 2020) suggesting that for the past decade, QTL has been the focal target of research to identify the genetic loci regulating the adaptive response of crops to drought stress (Zenda et al 2020).…”