OMICS based Interventions for Climate Proof Crops

Abstract

Agriculture – the key to human civilization without doubt can be regarded as an essential part of our daily lives providing us our bread and butter. Food production or creation of fibers, fuels, raw materials & biopharmaceuticals forming the fundamental basis of human and animal sustenance is because of crop and other plant species. With a long history of humankind and agriculture co-existence, and immense & indispensable importance of agriculture in human sustenance today, it is therefore our duty to further promote and sustain agriculture. The present global scenario takes our attention to what we call ‘Climate Change’. Adverse change in climate can lead to imbalance in food production and ultimately imbalance of the human health, nutrition, and happiness. It is evident that the impact of climate change covers all regions. Thus, we need strategies that enable us to increase our food production to feed the ever-growing human population and at the same time keep sustainability and effect on environment in mind. This is where the term sustainable agriculture comes into play. Indefinite food production without causing severe or irreversible damage to the ecosystem is the key. Sustainable agriculture should not be misunderstood by totally abolishing new technologies. But it actually aims at developing technologies that helps in improving agriculture production without having negative impact on the environment. We here propose certain biotechnology-based strategies that can overcome negative impact of climate change and will also lead in improving future food production and livelihood. Droughts, irregular precipitations, deviated temperatures are predicted to be frequent in the near future. The question is, how do we tackle these problems? There is a need to have climate proof crops, i.e. the crops that can sustain various abiotic stresses. So far conventional means have been exploited but looking at the looming population and the intensity of climatic vagaries the need is to focus on new technologies having solutions with sustainability. One such technology is omics, and where transcriptomics and proteomics are two key approaches. Large numbers of genes/proteins that are involved in regulating different stresses and finally can be exploited to generate next-generation crops to enable enhanced food production are available. Molecular breeding has tremendous scope that will ensure introgression of desirable traits in cultivars without any linkage drag. Biotechnology also provides us the platform to look for desirable genes across genera and even the kingdom. Thus genome revolution has to play a role in next green revolution to have climate proof crops that can improve future food production and livelihood for sustainable human habitations.