Breeding Strategies for Drought Tolerance in Crop Plant, A View
Keywords:
Drought, Conventional breeding, Photosynthesis, Crop yieldAbstract
Drought is one of the most severe abiotic stresses in many regions of the world, and it is one of the
most urgent issues in the current climate scenario. Drought-tolerant varieties are in high demand, which appears
to be a challenging task for plant breeders. However, difficulties are complicated by crop production challenges
on genetic and physiological bases. Drought is one of the most major environmental factors affecting crop
productivity and quality around the world. Drought mostly impacts crops that thrive in wetland conditions,
which account for 80% of all farmed land in the world. Climate change raises the likelihood of increased
drought in many regions of the world in the next decades, causing crop damage as a result of abnormal
metabolism and perhaps reducing crop growth, crop death, or crop development death. Drought resistance is
defined as the mechanism(s) that cause the crop to lose the least amount of yield in a drought environment
compared to the highest yield in a constant-free of optimal environment. Drought stress reduces the size of the
leaves, stem extension, and root proliferation inside the soil; it also disrupts plant water relations and reduces
water-use efficiency, reducing the plant’s yielding ability. Therefore, breeding for drought resistance is a good
approach, combining both conventional and molecular approaches to develop a drought resistant variety. Root
morphology research, proline estimates, and leaf rolling are all factors to take into account. Breeding improved
drought-tolerant cultivars may be more effective if selection is based on a comprehensive approach to testing.
Water stress also affects the crop’s physiological activity by inhibiting photosynthesis and assimilates
consumption in the growing leaves. Plant hormones play a key role in transducing the stress signal, with
abscisic acid (ABA) being the most important among them. To alleviate suitable crop productivity under
environmental stresses, scientists developed various breeding strategies, such as conventional breeding, which
works for both self-pollinated and cross-pollinated crops and is used to develop or improve cultivars using a
basic conservative tool for manipulating plant genomes within the natural genetic boundaries of species.
Pedigree, recurrent selection, back-crossing, and mutation breeding are among the conventional breeding
strategies used to generate cultivars that can withstand drought stress.