Abstract

Among other environmental instabilities, drought stress is the primary limitation to cereal crops growth, development and productivity. In the context of continuing global climate change, breeding of drought resistant crop cultivars is the most economical, effective and sustainable strategy for adapting the crop production system and ensuring food security for the growing human population. Additionally, there is need for improving management practices. Whereas conventional breeding has sustained crop productivity gains in the past century, modern technological advancements have revolutionized our identification of important drought tolerance genes and underlying mechanisms, and accelerated new cultivar development. Large-scale high throughput sequencing, phenotyping, ‘omics’ and systems biology, as well as marker assisted and quantitative trait loci mapping based breeding approaches have offered significant insights into crop drought stress tolerance and provided some new tools for crop improvement. Despite this significant progress in elucidating the mechanisms underlying drought tolerance, considerable challenges remain and our understanding of the crop drought tolerance mechanisms is still abstract. In this chapter, therefore, we highlight current progress in the identification of drought tolerance genes and underlying mechanisms, as well as their practical applications. We then offer a holistic approach for cereal crops adaptation to future climate change exacerbated drought stress.

Highlights

  • Drought stress is the primary environmental factor influencing the growth, development and productivity of crops and its significance is expected to increase in the wake of global climate change [1–4]

  • Genetic and management strategies that are aimed at improving grain yields under water constrained environments target three variables, which are the amount of water captured by the plant (W), the efficiency with which that water is converted to biomass, and the harvest index (HI) or the proportion of biomass forming grain

  • While a significant progress has been made to date towards achieving that goal, our understanding of the mechanisms underpinning plant drought stress tolerance remains fragmentary

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Summary

Introduction

Drought stress is the primary environmental factor influencing the growth, development and productivity of crops and its significance is expected to increase in the wake of global climate change [1–4]. As staple foods, maize and wheat contribute approximately two thirds of the global food energy intake [8] These cereal crops are important raw materials in the animal feed and bio-fuel manufacturing industries [10]. Modern technological advancements have accelerated the pace and impact of new cultivar development Such technologies include high throughput omics approaches, identification of quantitative trait loci (QTL) underlying abiotic and biotic stress resistances, marker assisted selection (MAS) and gene cloning [12–15]. Despite this significant progress in elucidating the mechanisms underlying drought tolerance, considerable challenges remain and our understanding of the crop drought tolerance mechanisms is still abstract. We conclude by offering an integrated strategy for adapting cereal grain crops to drought stress in the context of climate change

Drought stress effects in cereal grain crops
Plants drought stress responses and resistance mechanisms
QTL mapping for drought tolerance in cereals
Phenotyping for drought tolerance in cereal grain crops
Genetic engineering of drought tolerant cereal crops
Field management of crops in the context of climate change
10. Future outlook
11. Conclusion
Findings
Conflict of interest
Full Text
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