Identification of Abiotic Stress Responsive Genes from Indian High Altitude Lepidium latifolium L.

Abstract

The high altitude regions owing to their unique climatic and geographic differentiation have specific agro-technological requirements, different from the ones employed elsewhere for vegetable production. The major high altitude abiotic stresses includes cold, frost, drought, salinity, low oxygen, high wind velocity and intense UV radiations etc. that negatively influence the survival, biomass production and yields of vegetable crops 1 up to 70 per cent. Since tolerance to these stresses is multigenic and quantitative in nature, a massive challenge exists to understand the key molecular mechanisms for advanced selective breeding purposes. A lot of efforts made to identify the suitable varieties/hybrids and cultivation practices, the complexity of trait of tolerance to abiotic stresses remains the major limitation in overcoming these barriers for better agricultural productivity of high altitude regions. Also, the mechanisms by which plants perceive environmental signals and further their transmission to cellular machinery to activate adaptive responses is of critical importance for the development of rational breeding and transgenic strategies to impart abiotic stress tolerance in vegetable crops 2 . Conventional breeding methods have met with limited success in improving the abiotic stress tolerance of important vegetables while biotechnology offers new and highly precise strategies that can be used to develop transgenics crop plants with improved tolerance to abiotic stress that would certainly enhance the productivity of vegetable crops at high altitude regions 3 . Although, recent advancements in genomics, transcriptomics and regulomics have enriched our understanding on stress physiology of plants, and it is hoped that this will contribute to the development of tolerant genotypes for such regions. Timely modulation of specific sets of genes is critical for