Current breeding and genomic approaches to enhance the cane and sugar productivity under abiotic stress conditions

Abstract

Sugarcane (Saccharum spp.) crop is vulnerable to many abiotic stresses such as drought, salinity, waterlogging, cold and high temperature due to climate change. Over the past few decades new breeding and genomic approaches have been used to enhance the genotypic performance under abiotic stress conditions. In sugarcane, introgression of genes from wild species and allied genera for abiotic stress tolerance traits plays a significant role in the development of several stress-tolerant varieties. Moreover, the genomics and transcriptomics approaches have helped to elucidate the key genes/TFs and pathways involved in abiotic stress tolerance in sugarcane. Several novel miRNAs families /proteins or regulatory elements that are responsible for drought, salinity, and cold tolerance have been identified through high-throughput sequencing. The existing sugarcane monoploid genome sequence information opens new gateways and opportunities for researchers to improve the desired traits through efficient genome editing tools, such as the clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat-Cas (CRISPR/Cas) system. TALEN mediated mutations in a highly conserved region of the caffeic acid O-methyltransferase (COMT) of sugarcane significantly reduces the lignin content in the cell wall which is amenable for biofuel production from lignocellulosic biomass. In this review, we focus on current breeding with genomic approaches and their substantial role in enhancing cane production under the abiotic stress conditions, which is expected to provide new insights to plant breeders and biotechnologists to modify their strategy in developing stress-tolerant sugarcane varieties, which can highlight the future demand of cane, bio-energy, and viability of sugar industries.

Recent Advances in Sugarcane Genomics, Physiology, and Phenomics for Superior Agronomic Traits

“…Hence, chances of introgression of new alleles through recombination are possible only at the beginning of the crossing program, which is carried out in once every 12 years. Furthermore, handling a large number of seedlings in the ground nursery and carrying them forwards in the subsequent stages of first and second clonal trials before entering pre-zonal variety testing is a herculean task (Meena et al, 2020a). These tasks are time consuming, labor intensive, and expensive because they require the maintenance of clonal lines in large land areas.…”

“…Therefore, the use of modern approaches, such as speed breeding, GS, and genome editing, could accelerate the accumulation of favorable alleles for several desired agronomic traits. Many traits of agronomically superior value, such as uniform tillering habits, erect canopy, non-flowering nature of the plant, high sucrose yield, deep root system, ability to stay green, high NMC, high SCW, higher cane yield, high commercial cane sugar production in tonnes per hectare (CCS t/ha), and high biomass and fiber production, are considered to be important traits in the main sugarcane breeding programs ( Meena et al, 2020b ) ( Figure 1 ). The combinations of these traits further depend upon the breeding objective of the researchers.…”

Characterisation of an ethyl methanesulfonate‐derived drought‐tolerant sugarcane mutant line

“…Because drought in sugarcane involves the response of multiple genes, the breeding of drought-tolerant genotypes is a highly complex process that remains a major challenge to researchers and/or farmers (Dlamini, 2021;Ferreira et al, 2017;Mall et al, 2022). Breeding for this trait using conventional breeding and transformation technology has resulted in some successes (Mall et al, 2020;Meena et al, 2020;Zhou, 2013). However, the complexity of the sugarcane genome (D'Hont et al, 1998;Garsmeur et al, 2018;Zhang et al, 2018), the challenges linked to identifying traits linked to drought tolerance in commercial varieties of this crop, and negative public acceptance of transgenic technology remains a challenge.…”

The In Silico Sugarcane Genome-Encoded MicroRNA and Target Network Prediction for Targeting the SCMV

“…RNAi-based amiRNA construct has been deployed in research to create antiviral resistance in plants against plant viral species such as tomato [25,26], cucumber [27], rice [28] and cotton [29]. Mature miRNAs in sugarcane genome have been predicted, identified, isolated, analyzed, and validated for evaluation of host-virus interactions, gene regulation and was associated with abiotic and biotic stresses [30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40]. Recently, experimental validation of 35 conserved mature sugarcane genome-encoded, high-confidence sof-miRNAs/ssp-miRNAs and further deposition in the miRBase database were reported.…”