A key component of sustainable development aimed at addressing poverty, malnutrition and improving livelihoods is crop genetic diversity. It is necessary that plant genetic diversity must be conserved and utilized for meeting future growth requirements and ensuring food security directly impacting health and environmental sustainability. It is crucial to conserve and utilize crop genetic diversity to develop new plant gene combinations for crop varieties suited to diverse agricultural conditions and capable of withstanding environmental stresses. Crop genetic resources, stored in gene banks and other repositories are invaluable reservoirs of genetic diversity, safeguarding plant species from climate change and human driven homogenization of agricultural landscapes. Understanding the distribution of genetic variation in crops is critical for preserving and harnessing that variation to address challenges posed by changing markets, climate and agricultural approaches. Lack of genetic diversity limits breeding advancement and the ability to enhance crop productivity and quality. As the global climate changes, ensuring availability and access to diverse genetic resources is essential to enable worldwide farming industry to adapt and satisfy the growing demands of expanding population. Sustainable development and food security depend on the conservation and exploitation of agricultural biodiversity, integrating genetic diversity and crop improvement as inalienable strategies for sustainable agriculture and the conservation of biodiversity.
Although soybeans (Glycine max) are a major oilseed crop grown worldwide, abiotic stressors, especially drought, have a major negative influence on their output. The identification and breeding of drought-tolerant soybean varieties should be given priority since there is an evident need to boost agricultural production in this period of shrinking water supplies and rising food demand. However, due to the difficulties in phenotyping and genotyping, breeding for tolerant to drought stress is often disregarded. With a focus on key genes, this chapter thoroughly explores the present level of knowledge regarding the breeding techniques used to increase soybean tolerance against drought stress. This chapter discusses the genetic basis of drought stress tolerance in soybeans, emphasizing the genes and genomic areas that are important for this characteristic. Furthermore, reviewed on the various breeding strategies like genomic selection (GS) and marker-assisted selection (MAS) that are employed in soybean breeding programmes to increase and introgress these key genes. Furthermore, submissions are cutting-edge methods used in drought-tolerant breeding, including transcriptomics, proteomics, CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing, quantitative trait locus mapping and many more others.
Next-generation sequencing (NGS) has revolutionized crop improvement by providing high-throughput, cost-effective and rapid genotyping technologies. The NGS technology has revolutionized genomic research, enabling the sequencing of thousands of plant genomes. This has facilitated the identification of millions of new markers and agronomically important genes for crop improvement. This technology has significantly advanced our understanding of genetic diversity, gene function, and evolutionary relationships among organisms. In the field of agriculture, NGS has emerged as a powerful tool for crop improvement, offering unusual opportunities to enhance crop yield, quality, and sustainability. This chapter aims to give an overview of different generations of sequencing and its various applications in crop improvement.
DNA markers allowed marker-assisted selection, which increased the output and precision of traditional plant breeding. MAS has accelerated and improved the methodology of plant breeding, helping plant breeders all around the world. This chapter explores the principles, types, and applications of molecular markers in crop breeding programmes. Molecular markers, such as RFLPs, RAPD, AFLPs, SNPs and SSRs, offer advantages such as high reproducibility, abundance, and genome-wide coverage. This tactic has been effectively employed in various crops for characters for instance disease resistance, abiotic stress tolerance, and quality attributes. In addition to marker assisted selection, highly polymorphic molecular markers are produced for gene mapping, genetic diversity estimate, crop development and phylogeny, heterosis investigation, evaluation of diploid/haploid crops, and genotyping of cultivars.
The production of plants through seeds is time consuming and there are several crop plants that are incapable to produce seed. Plant tissue culture aids in the speedy production of plantlets and also supports to produce seedless plants directly through plant cells, tissues or other plant parts. Plant tissue culture leads to the fast production of high-quality, disease-free plants, which is only imaginable by micropropagation. Plants can be produced around the year, regardless of period and climate. Anther, pollen or microspore cultures leads to the production of haploid plants. Usage of callus, ovule and embryo rescue techniques has made wide hybridization effective; as a consequence, viable plantlets acquired from wide crosses. Plant tissue culture has commenced as the most capable area of biotechnological techniques for present and future agriculture. Its concealments a comprehensive area from production of disease-free plants, production of pharmaceutically important compounds: secondary metabolites, micropropagation of horticultural, ornamental, medicinal and forest trees etc.; the production of haploids and triploids, genetic transformation and enhancement in nutritional value of crop plants and developing resistance against various biotic and abiotic stresses. Nevertheless, plant tissue culture technique is an expensive technology compared to traditional methods. It necessitates sophisticated laboratories and skilled-person hence, it is essential to diminish price by espousing appropriate events and better application of resources and improved process competence. Plant tissue culture efficaciously applied in plant breeding for the speedy production of improved crop plants and become an integral part of plant breeding. The loss of germplasm is a very serious problem when the germplasm is deposited in field gene banks. In vitro storage of germplasm through plant tissue culture and cryopreservation resolves the problem of harm of genetic resources in field gene banks. As a result, the future generations will be able to use genetic resources for their research work to further improvement in crop plants. Cell culture has an excessive role in the future as it is related with genetic transformation of the plants, which facilitates the production of transgenic plants.
The agricultural sector faces unprecedented challenges in the twenty-first century, primarily driven by exponential population growth and accelerating climate change impacts. These challenges manifest through various environmental stresses, with abiotic factors emerging as critical constraints to global agricultural productivity, affecting over 60% of agricultural land worldwide. The increasing frequency and intensity of environmental stresses, particularly drought, salinity, and temperature extremes, significantly impact crop yield and stability, with estimated annual losses exceeding $100 billion globally. Traditional breeding approaches, while valuable, have shown limitations in addressing these complex environmental challenges. The integration of conventional breeding with advanced biotechnological tools, including marker-assisted selection (MAS), quantitative trait loci (QTL) mapping, genomic selection, and CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technology, offers promising solutions for developing climate-resilient crops. This chapter examines the multifaceted nature of abiotic stresses and presents a comprehensive framework for integrating traditional and modern breeding approaches to enhance crop resilience and productivity under stress conditions. Recent advances in high-throughput phenotyping and genomic technologies have revolutionized our understanding of stress tolerance mechanisms and accelerated the development of resilient crop varieties.
ISBN : 978-81-973154-3-5
