Network Candidate Genes in Breeding for Drought Tolerant Crops

Abstract

Climate change leading to increased periods of low water availability as well as increasing demands for food in the coming years makes breeding for drought tolerant crops a high priority. Plants have developed diverse strategies and mechanisms to survive drought stress. However, most of these represent drought escape or avoidance strategies like early flowering or low stomatal conductance that are not applicable in breeding for crops with high yields under drought conditions. Even though a great deal of research is ongoing, especially in cereals, in this regard, not all mechanisms involved in drought tolerance are yet understood. The identification of candidate genes for drought tolerance that have a high potential to be used for breeding drought tolerant crops represents a challenge. Breeding for drought tolerant crops has to focus on acceptable yields under water-limited conditions and not on survival. However, as more and more knowledge about the complex networks and the cross talk during drought is available, more options are revealed. In addition, it has to be considered that conditioning a crop for drought tolerance might require the production of metabolites and might cost the plants energy and resources that cannot be used in terms of yield. Recent research indicates that yield penalty exists and efficient breeding for drought tolerant crops with acceptable yields under well-watered and drought conditions might require uncoupling yield penalty from drought tolerance.

Two Chloroplast Proteins Suppress Drought Resistance by Affecting ROS Production in Guard Cells

“…Also, systems approaches including various omics analyses have recently been used for identifying drought resistance-related genes. The identified candidate genes are valuable for evaluation of natural variations between resistant and sensitive varieties and could be eventually used for breeding drought-resistant crops (Jogaiah et al, 2013;Krannich et al, 2015;Zhu et al, 2016).…”

Selection and Breeding of Suitable Crop Genotypes for Drought and Heat Periods in a Changing Climate: Which Morphological and Physiological Properties Should Be Considered?

“…How should these genotypes behave? The superficial answer would be that they should be less susceptible to abiotic stresses, but a closer and critical look on specific functions and interactions on the whole plant level may help to evaluate the sustainable performance of crop species and varieties in a more comprehensive manner [6][7][8]. The overall performance of a species or a variety depends on the plant integral activity during the pre-stress phase, the stress period(s) and the recovery phase(s) [9].…”

Genetics and Genomics of Cultivated Eggplants and Wild Relatives

“…Drought is considered by many experts the stress that presents the strongest negative impact on yield and crop productivity (Krannich et al, 2015). Plants have developed different strategies, involving several different genes and pathways, to mitigate the negative effects of drought (Reguera et al, 2012).…”

“…Candidate genes involved in pathways strictly related to drought tolerance were gathered from the current scientific literature (Bolger et al, 2014;Zhang et al, 2014;Krannich et al 2015;Landi et al, 2016).…”

“…In those materials 142 eggplant genome regions were identified as orthologs of candidate genes related to drought tolerance in other crops (Bolger et al, 2014;Zhang N. et al, 2014;Krannich et al, 2015;Landi et al, 2016), with 68 of them being present in the fixed ILs.…”