Chapter Fifteen - Studies on radiation processed polymers mediated biochemical and molecular responses and relevance to enhancing plant productivity

Abstract

Climate change has severe impact on the incidence of erratic, extreme weather events leading to substantial effects on the world's ecosystems. Efforts are therefore required for enhancing crop resilience and adaptation to climate change for sustainable production, food and nutrition security. Multiple adaptation strategies are advocated for climate resilient agriculture and increasing farmers' income by incorporating plant bio regulators or biostimulants in agriculture. Use of oligochitosan in stress adaptation towards resilience and mitigation, has highlighted the need for understanding of biochemical and molecular mechanisms involved in enhancing plant productivity. Advances in nanobiotechnology methods have led to various chitosan based nanomaterials products for use in agriculture. Chitosan, a versatile, most promising biological macromolecule, has an immense scope in agriculture to boost crop growth and defense responses. In our work, radiation technologies like Gamma and Electron beam irradiation were utilized to obtain chitosan nanocomposits to ameliorate multiple stress tolerance through positive enhancement of chitinase. The applications significantly modulated various morphological, biochemical mechanisms in different crops as well as restricting pathogenic microbes while improving beneficial microbe growth and, plant performance under abiotic and biotic stress conditions. The multilocation field data on irradiated chitosan effect as biostimulator indicated about 25–30t/ha cane and 3.5t/ha sugar yield, 8–10t/ha yield in potato and onion. The study suggests that irradiated chitosan modulated positive enhancement is induced through a series of biochemical mechanisms in different crops like sugarcane, potato, onion, pea etc. Thus the study opens up on the new avenues to utilize low-cost, most abundant biopolymer derivative(s) for sustainable and climate resilient agriculture.