Abstract

Drought and heat in dryland agriculture challenge the enhancement of crop productivity and threaten global food security. This review is centered on harnessing genetic variation through biotechnology-led approaches to select for increased productivity and stress tolerance that will enhance crop adaptation in dryland environments. Peer-reviewed literature, mostly from the last decade and involving experiments with at least two seasons' data, form the basis of this review. It begins by highlighting the adverse impact of the increasing intensity and duration of drought and heat stress due to global warming on crop productivity and its impact on food and nutritional security in dryland environments. This is followed by (1) an overview of the physiological and molecular basis of plant adaptation to elevated CO2 (eCO(2)), drought, and heat stress; (2) the critical role of high-throughput phenotyping platforms to study phenomes and genomes to increase breeding efficiency; (3) opportunities to enhance stress tolerance and productivity in food crops (cereals and grain legumes) by deploying biotechnology-led approaches [pyramiding quantitative trait loci (QTL), genomic selection, marker-assisted recurrent selection, epigenetic variation, genome editing, and transgene) and inducing flowering independent of environmental clues to match the length of growing season; (4) opportunities to increase productivity in C-3 crops by harnessing novel variations (genes and network) in crops' (C-3, C-4) germplasm pools associated with increased photosynthesis; and (5) the adoption, impact, risk assessment, and enabling policy environments to scale up the adoption of seed-technology to enhance food and nutritional security. This synthesis of technological innovations and insights in seed-based technology offers crop genetic enhancers further opportunities to increase crop productivity in dryland environments.

Keywords

adoption and impact; applied genomics; gene editing; global warming; phenomics; photosynthesis; stress-tolerant cultivar; transgene

Published in

Frontiers in Plant Science
2018, Volume: 9, article number: 1249

SLU Authors

• Ortiz Rios, Rodomiro Octavio

  • Department of Plant Breeding, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG13 Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts
SDG2 End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture


UKÄ Subject classification

Plant Biotechnology
Agricultural Science
Genetics and Breeding


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2018.01249

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/96252