Current status and future strategy in breeding pea to improve resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses

Chickpea is one of the most important pulse crops having estimated genome size of 738 Mb. The crop is affected by various biotic and abiotic stresses causing significant yield reduction. During the recent past, some biotic stresses like fusarium wilt, ascochyta blight, botrytis grey mould and abiotic stresses like drought, heat and salinity were found to reduce the productivity, thereafter, these demands for development of high yielding early maturing chickpea varieties with resistance to various biotic and abiotic stresses. Due to the advent of molecular techniques and availability of highly polymorphic and co-dominant microsatellite and other molecular markers, development of genetic maps for chickpea has progressed significantly. Molecular markers are now considered better than morphological and physiological characters for being stable, unaffected by environmental influences and easily detectable irrespective of their growth and development stages. The mapping of genes / QTLs for various traits like flowering time, yield and yield related traits, resistance to fusarium wilt, ascochyta blight, BGM, drought, salinity, heat may be useful in developing improved varieties of chickpea besides deeper understanding of genetics underlying the inheritance of the characters. The knowledge on mapped genes / QTLs for various traits of interest could help in integration of genomics-assisted breeding through various approaches like Marker Assisted Back Crossing, introgression of superior alleles from wild species through Advanced Backcross QTL, Marker Assisted Recurrent Selection and Genome Wide Selection for improving chickpea.

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Sugarcane Omics: An Update on the Current Status of Research and Crop Improvement

Plants ◽

10.3390/plants8090344 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 8 (9) ◽

pp. 344 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Ahmad Ali ◽

Mehran Khan ◽

Rahat Sharif ◽

Muhammad Mujtaba ◽

San-Ji Gao

Keyword(s):

Genetic Engineering ◽

Abiotic Stresses ◽

Crop Improvement ◽

Genome Structure ◽

Raw Material ◽

Low Fertility ◽

Current Status ◽

Marker Genes ◽

Production Cycle ◽

Biotic And Abiotic Stresses

Sugarcane is an important crop from Poaceae family, contributing about 80% of the total world’s sucrose with an annual value of around US$150 billion. In addition, sugarcane is utilized as a raw material for the production of bioethanol, which is an alternate source of renewable energy. Moving towards sugarcane omics, a remarkable success has been achieved in gene transfer from a wide variety of plant and non-plant sources to sugarcane, with the accessibility of efficient transformation systems, selectable marker genes, and genetic engineering gears. Genetic engineering techniques make possible to clone and characterize useful genes and also to improve commercially important traits in elite sugarcane clones that subsequently lead to the development of an ideal cultivar. Sugarcane is a complex polyploidy crop, and hence no single technique has been found to be the best for the confirmation of polygenic and phenotypic characteristics. To better understand the application of basic omics in sugarcane regarding agronomic characters and industrial quality traits as well as responses to diverse biotic and abiotic stresses, it is important to explore the physiology, genome structure, functional integrity, and collinearity of sugarcane with other more or less similar crops/plants. Genetic improvements in this crop are hampered by its complex genome, low fertility ratio, longer production cycle, and susceptibility to several biotic and abiotic stresses. Biotechnology interventions are expected to pave the way for addressing these obstacles and improving sugarcane crop. Thus, this review article highlights up to date information with respect to how advanced data of omics (genomics, transcriptomic, proteomics and metabolomics) can be employed to improve sugarcane crops.

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Tuning Beforehand: A Foresight on RNA Interference (RNAi) and In Vitro-Derived dsRNAs to Enhance Crop Resilience to Biotic and Abiotic Stresses

International Journal of Molecular Sciences ◽

10.3390/ijms22147687 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 22 (14) ◽

pp. 7687

Author(s):

Eltayb Abdellatef ◽

Nasrein Mohamed Kamal ◽

Hisashi Tsujimoto

Keyword(s):

Abiotic Stress ◽

Rna Interference ◽

Gene Silencing ◽

Stress Responses ◽

Abiotic Stresses ◽

Current Status ◽

Transcriptional Gene Silencing ◽

Biotic And Abiotic Stresses ◽

Rnai Technology ◽

Micro Rnas

Crop yield is severely affected by biotic and abiotic stresses. Plants adapt to these stresses mainly through gene expression reprogramming at the transcriptional and post-transcriptional levels. Recently, the exogenous application of double-stranded RNAs (dsRNAs) and RNA interference (RNAi) technology has emerged as a sustainable and publicly acceptable alternative to genetic transformation, hence, small RNAs (micro-RNAs and small interfering RNAs) have an important role in combating biotic and abiotic stresses in plants. RNAi limits the transcript level by either suppressing transcription (transcriptional gene silencing) or activating sequence-specific RNA degradation (post-transcriptional gene silencing). Using RNAi tools and their respective targets in abiotic stress responses in many crops is well documented. Many miRNAs families are reported in plant tolerance response or adaptation to drought, salinity, and temperature stresses. In biotic stress, the spray-induced gene silencing (SIGS) provides an intelligent method of using dsRNA as a trigger to silence target genes in pests and pathogens without producing side effects such as those caused by chemical pesticides. In this review, we focus on the potential of SIGS as the most recent application of RNAi in agriculture and point out the trends, challenges, and risks of production technologies. Additionally, we provide insights into the potential applications of exogenous RNAi against biotic stresses. We also review the current status of RNAi/miRNA tools and their respective targets on abiotic stress and the most common responsive miRNA families triggered by stress conditions in different crop species.

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