Drought Stress Response in Agricultural Plants: A Case Study of Common Bean (Phaseolus vulgarisL.)

Abstract

Drought is one of the major threats to common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.), affecting its growth and productivity and, thus, contributing to considerable losses in yield in many regions worldwide. The development of varieties tolerant of drought stress has, therefore, become one of the primary goals in many common bean breeding programs. Plants have developed various mechanisms of their adaptation, to a greater or lesser extent, to drought. These are expressed, on the molecular level, by changes of gene expression and of protein content, together with responses at physiological and morphological levels. The response of common bean to drought is still not sufficiently well characterized due to its genetic complexity and its diverse, often ambiguous, phenotypic effects. Understanding these mechanisms is thus of fundamental importance for developing varieties that are better adapted to such stress conditions. In this chapter, we present research that provides an insight into the morpho-physiological adaptation and its underlying molecular changes in common bean plants exposed to drought. We include our contribution to establishing the basis for breeding of common bean with greater tolerance to this abiotic stress that uses molecular markers and identification of quantitative trait loci (QTLs).

QTL Mapping for Drought-Responsive Agronomic Traits Associated with Physiology, Phenology, and Yield in an Andean Intra-Gene Pool Common Bean Population

“…Developing Andean cultivars with enhanced performance under drought conditions and adaptability to local environments remains a challenge [9]. Andean varieties represent the majority of common bean germplasm in Europe (67%), are becoming an important staple food on the international market, and are commonly consumed in parts of Africa [11,[17][18][19][20]. The potential of Andean genotypes for improving drought tolerance by selection for yield-associated traits has been indicated in phenotyping studies examining genotypes from both gene pools under drought and irrigation conditions [8,21,22].…”

New Age of Common Bean

“…In 2021, global production of dry common bean is estimated at more than 27 million tons on more than 34 million ha [14], feeding more than 300 million people linked to the global agricultural economy [15]. An outstanding feature of the germplasm of common bean is its particularly high diversity [16]. It is grown all over the world in different local environments and climates, with extremely diverse cultivation methods, uses and range of environments to which it is adapted, which has contributed to the great diversity of common bean in terms of growth type, seed characteristics and maturity period [16,17], but unfavorable environmental conditions, especially drought and salinity in soils, affect its overall performance and reduce productivity and harvest but also consequently the nutritional value [10,18].…”

Drought and heat affect common bean minerals and human diet—What we know and where to go

“…The resolution of these maps has considerably improved over the years. Based on these maps, an increasing amount of genetic markers including microsatellites and single‐nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), a variation at a single position in a DNA sequence, have been recently developed (Leitão et al, 2021; Sedlar, Kidrič, et al, 2020; Sedlar, Zupin, et al, 2020). Particularly, mining in common beans QTLs affecting field performance and nutrient value under drought will be still crucial in the future design of molecular tools for marker‐associated selection (MAS).…”