Genetic Engineering of Crop Plants for Drought Tolerance:Role of Transcription Factors

Abstract

Agricultural production is severely affected by various abiotic stresses including drought. Development of crop plants tolerant to drought is an urgent need to increase crop productivity to feed the growing population. It is imperative to understand the adaptive mechanism of plants to drought especially the type and expression levels of drought responsive genes. Several genes upregulated during abiotic stress have been exploited to develop drought tolerant plants. Genetic engineering of crop plants with stress responsive genes has been an effective method of generating drought tolerant plants. But expressions of these stress responsive genes are regulated by several transcription factors (TFs). TFs are DNA binding proteins that bind to the specific sequence motif and modulate the levels of gene expression. They may function as an activator, or repressor for the expression of specific genes. Transgenic plants expressing drought responsive TFs have been shown to improve drought tolerance in many crop plants. In this review, we have discussed the details on TFs used for developing various transgenic plants and also analyzed the potential of TFs for further transgenic studies. The future direction to exploit TFs for sustainable crop production under drought is also highlighted.