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Genetic engineering approaches for drought tolerance in grain legumes: progress and prospects

OAR@ICRISAT

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Relation http://oar.icrisat.org/10257/
 
Title Genetic engineering approaches for drought tolerance in grain legumes: progress and prospects
 
Creator Bhatnagar-Mathur, P
Vadez, V
Sharma, K K
 
Subject Genetic Engineering
Climate change
Legume Crops
 
Description Inadequate water resources and the ensuing climate change
over the recent years are posing major challenges for food production.
Drought in various forms is responsible for major losses
to global crop production, affecting millions of resource-poor
farmers in the semi-arid tropics. While developing drought-tolerant
cultivars could alleviate such economical strains, genetic
improvement of grain legumes is difficult to achieve through
conventional means due to their highly self-pollinating characteristics
and conserved genomes with very little variability.
To generate additional genetic diversity, we attempted to enhance
drought tolerance in chickpea and peanut through genetic
engineering approaches. Independent transgenic events
with high transpiration efficiencies (TE) and desirable root and
shoot traits were selected for further evaluation under a series
of environments under glasshouse and confined field trials
to comprehensively study the component traits of drought,
and understand the stress adaptive mechanisms. Relationship
between TE and its surrogate traits were explored, besides
studying the role of biochemical changes in the anti-oxidative
machinery under water-limiting conditions. Evaluations
were based on water capture, effective use of captured water
for producing biomass via photosynthesis, and converting
assimilates into harvestable yield. Accordingly, critical assessment
of drought tolerance and yield under contained field conditions
proved the effectiveness of several events that showed
substantial yield improvement under drought stress, without
any accompanying yield penalty under irrigation. Details
of various strategies to develop drought tolerant transgenc
plants, and the results and scope of our own studies will be
discussed.
 
Date 2017-02
 
Type Conference or Workshop Item
PeerReviewed
 
Format application/pdf
 
Language en
 
Rights —
 
Identifier http://oar.icrisat.org/10257/1/Abstract_Book_107.pdf
Bhatnagar-Mathur, P and Vadez, V and Sharma, K K (2017) Genetic engineering approaches for drought tolerance in grain legumes: progress and prospects. In: InterDrought-V, February 21-25, 2017, Hyderabad, India.