Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) Marker for Abiotic Stress Tolerance in Crop Plants

Abstract

Agricultural crop production has been seriously hampered by various detrimental environmental conditions all over the world. Such conditions modify the growth and development of plants and ultimately reduce the economic yield enormously. These detrimental effects can be overcome by developing better stress-tolerance plants utilizing different genetic techniques. Therefore, there is a need to develop a marker system for the identification of stress responsive genes in order to combat the losses. Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) have become a more preferable marker over microsatellites because of their frequent occurrence in the genome and low rate of mutations. The discovery of SNPs in many crop species facilitates the availability and identification of many genes or quantitative trait loci (QTLs) associated with traits related to abiotic stress. Hence, identification of SNP flanking the genomic regions containing QTLs for aspects of abiotic stress tolerance would strongly expedite the targeted integration of this trait into another susceptible germplasm. Such identification of SNPs will not only promote marker-assisted breeding for abiotic stress tolerance but also open a vista for cloning and evaluation of primary genetic factors suitable for engineering improved abiotic stress tolerant plants. This review presents the present status of SNP marker technologies for abiotic stress tolerance in crop plants.