Breeding for Climate Resilience in Agricultural Crops


Creative Commons License

Lone A. A., Dar Z. A., Wanı S. H., Kantar F., Gul A., Rashid M., ...More

IV International Plant Breeding Congress, Antalya, Turkey, 21 - 25 November 2022, vol.1, no.1, pp.62

  • Publication Type: Conference Paper / Summary Text
  • Volume: 1
  • City: Antalya
  • Country: Turkey
  • Page Numbers: pp.62
  • Akdeniz University Affiliated: Yes

Abstract

Climate change impacts agriculture in numerous ways including rising average temperatures, rainfall, changes in pests and diseases, rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide, ozone concentrations at ground level and changes in the nutritional quality of certain foods. Therefore, achieving global food security for rising global population under limited arable land is a major challenge in the twenty-first century. Farmers are advised to use climate-resilient crops and crop types as a means of coping with or adapting to climate change. As the primary source of protein and minerals for vegetarians, pulses are typically grown on marginal land with minimal inputs in a number of resourcepoor nations around the world. They are subjected to a variety of abiotic and biotic challenges as a result of their growing in resource-limited circumstances, which results in severe production losses. Additionally, the effects of climate change brought on by global warming have made them more susceptible to fresh biotic and abiotic pressures that could get considerably worse in the years to come. Climate-resilient smart pulse and cereal crop breeding and development have become more difficult as a result of the changing climate situation. Although pulses are climate smart, adapting to the consequences of climate change while also reducing them, their limited genetic variety has always been a key barrier to their ability to become more adaptable. For the development of cultivars that are climate-resilient, however, the genetic variety that currently exists still offers chances to take advantage of unique traits. Additionally, maize, a C4 plant, has a high yield potential as evidenced by the highest compound annual growth rate. However, due to the full exploitation of hybrid and manufacturing technology, maize production has plateaued in many nations. Therefore, it is necessary to generate maize ideotypes with favourable trait architecture for greater stress resistance and higher yield under changing climatic conditions. Abiotic stress in maize, such as drought, causes a delay in silking, which increases the anthesissilking gap and is a key contributor to yield losses. Every crop improvement programme must inevitably put a strong emphasis on making significant use of wild germplasm and unlocking the genetic diversity store. However, current developments in genomics, high-throughput phenomics, sequencing, and breeding methods, as well as state-of-the-art genome-editing tools coupled with artificial intelligence, open up new directions for the enhancement of climate-resilient crops. Adaptive characteristics that confer tolerance or resistance to climate-smart pulses and maize can be mined and exploited more quickly by applying cutting-edge biotechnological techniques including transgenics, genome editing, and epigenetics. In order to combat climate change and create new crop types that are better suited to the changing climate, holistic smart breeding approaches may be a feasible solution.