Abstract
Development of drought tolerant sugarcane cultivars has long been a major breeding objective in view of depleting water source and longer dry spells. Identification of specific candidate genes would be an efficient approach to the genetic improvement of sugarcane for drought tolerance. As the involvement of abscisic acid (ABA) in mediating drought stress has been well demonstrated, in the present study eleven putative candidate genes from orthologous species belonging to ABA dependent pathway viz ABF 2, ABF 3, ATHB-7, CIPK 14, CDPK 18, LEA 3, MYB 2, RD 28, RGS 1, SNRK 2.5 and TPS 2 were screened on a set of clones belonging to tolerant species viz. Saccharum spontaneum, S. barberi, S. sinense, S. robustum and Erianthus and the susceptible species of S. officinarum. Out of these, ten genes except ATHB-7 were amplified in Saccharum and Erianthus species. The genes ABF 2, CIPK 14, LEA 3, MYB 2, RD 28, RGS1 and SNRK 2.5 were absent in almost all the susceptible clones of S. officinarum and were present in the tolerant species clones implicating their role in imparting drought tolerance in sugarcane. Number of genes detected in S. officinarum ranged from 2 to 6 whereas drought tolerant species clones exhibited 4–10 genes. The clones SES 106 B and Iritty 2 (S. spontaneum), Pathri (S. barberi) and IK 76–99 (Erianthus) were found as the repositories of ten genes to be advantageously used in breeding for drought tolerance in sugarcane. The sequencing of the polymorphic bands and BLAST search would lead to the identification of new drought responsive genes in sugarcane for use as novel and functional candidate genes for improving drought tolerance in sugarcane through marker-assisted introgression breeding and genetic transformation approach.
Published Version
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