Natural Genetic Resources from Diverse Plants to Improve Abiotic Stress Tolerance in Plants

Abstract

The current agricultural system is biased for the yield increase at the cost of biodiversity. However, due to the loss of precious genetic diversity during domestication and artificial selection, modern cultivars have lost the adaptability to cope with unfavorable environments. There are many reports on variations such as single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and indels in the stress-tolerant gene alleles that are associated with higher stress tolerance in wild progenitors, natural accessions, and extremophiles in comparison with domesticated crops or model plants. Therefore, to gain a better understanding of stress-tolerant traits in naturally stress-resistant plants, more comparative studies between the modern crops/model plants and crop progenitors/natural accessions/extremophiles are required. In this review, we discussed and summarized recent progress on natural variations associated with enhanced abiotic stress tolerance in various plants. By applying the recent biotechniques such as the CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing tool, natural genetic resources (i.e., stress-tolerant gene alleles) from diverse plants could be introduced to the modern crop in a non-genetically modified way to improve stress-tolerant traits.

Salt and Drought Stress Responses in Cultivated Beets (Beta vulgaris L.) and Wild Beet (Beta maritima L.)

“…Moreover, the SNPs in the stress-tolerant alleles of beets should be detected to understand the relationships between stress tolerance and SNPs [ 67 ]. We need to perform comparative studies among the alleles from the tolerant and susceptible beet genotypes [ 186 ]. The application of modern biotechnological advancements like genome-wide association studies (GWAS), whole-genome surveys, and gene target surveys will open new opportunities and ease the prediction of causative elements at a single nucleotide level resolution [ 186 ].…”

“…We need to perform comparative studies among the alleles from the tolerant and susceptible beet genotypes [ 186 ]. The application of modern biotechnological advancements like genome-wide association studies (GWAS), whole-genome surveys, and gene target surveys will open new opportunities and ease the prediction of causative elements at a single nucleotide level resolution [ 186 ]. Likewise, the application of forward genetic approaches can also uncover beneficial traits in stress-tolerant wild crop progenitors [ 186 ].…”

“…The application of modern biotechnological advancements like genome-wide association studies (GWAS), whole-genome surveys, and gene target surveys will open new opportunities and ease the prediction of causative elements at a single nucleotide level resolution [ 186 ]. Likewise, the application of forward genetic approaches can also uncover beneficial traits in stress-tolerant wild crop progenitors [ 186 ]. Additionally, employing the reverse genetic strategies and characterizing the T-DNA loss or gain of function mutants, and applying the revolutionary CRISPR/Cas mediated gene editing, is another alluring platform to achieve climate-resilient beet cultivars and generate modifications in sucrose transporter genes to enhance sugar yield [ 103 ].…”

GWAS Reveals a Novel Candidate Gene CmoAP2/ERF in Pumpkin (Cucurbita moschata) Involved in Resistance to Powdery Mildew

“…Specifically, many breeders have resorted to the wild crop progenitors. These bestow rich genetic diversity and great potential to fortify the modern cultivars with either biotic or abiotic stress tolerance [ 49 , 50 ]. Previously, for breeding of PM resistant varieties, many wild cultivars were identified in various crops, including barley [ 51 ], wine grape [ 52 , 53 ], strawberry [ 54 ], and wheat [ 44 ].…”

Cell Type-Specific Differentiation Between Indica and Japonica Rice Root Tip Responses to Different Environments Based on Single-Cell RNA Sequencing

“…For example, previous studies showed that SNPs or indels in the promoter or the coding sequence of genes (such as COLD1, HAN1, bZIP73, LTG1, LTT7, qCTS-9, qPSR10) can enhance the cold tolerance of japonica rice (Liu et al, 2013(Liu et al, , 2019Ma et al, 2015;Zhao et al, 2017;Xiao et al, 2018;Mao et al, 2019;Xu et al, 2020). A change in the promoter activity led to the modification of HSFB2b expression, which led to salt stress tolerance in soybeans (Glycine max) (Yolcu et al, 2020).…”