Abiotic stresses including drought are serious threats to the sustainability of crop yields accounting for more crop productivity losses than any other factor in rainfed agriculture. Success in breeding for better adapted varieties to abiotic stresses depend upon the concerted efforts by various research domains including plant and cell physiology, molecular biology, genetics, and breeding. Use of modern molecular biology tools for elucidating the control mechanisms of abiotic stress tolerance, and for engineering stress tolerant crops is based on the expression of specific stress-related genes. Hence, genetic engineering for developing stress tolerant plants, based on the introgression of genes that are known to be involved in stress response and putative tolerance, might prove to be a faster track towards improving crop varieties. Far beyond the initial attempts to insert "single-action" genes, engineering of the regulatory machinery involving transcription factors has emerged as a new tool now for controlling the expression of many stress-responsive genes. Nevertheless, the task of generating transgenic cultivars is not only limited to the success in the transformation process, but also proper incorporation of the stress tolerance. Evaluation of the transgenic plants under stress conditions, and understanding the physiological effect of the inserted genes at the whole plant level remain as major challenges to overcome. This review focuses on the recent progress in using transgenic technology for the improvement of abiotic stress tolerance in plants. This includes discussion on the evaluation of abiotic stress response and the protocols for testing the transgenic plants for their tolerance under close-to-field conditions.

Producing more food per unit of water has never been as important as it is at present, and the demand for water by economic sectors other than agriculture will necessarily put a great deal of pressure on a dwindling resource, leading to a call for increases in the productivity of water in agriculture. This topic has been given high priority in the research agenda for the last 30 years, but with the exception of a few specific cases, such as water-use-efficient wheat in Australia, breeding crops for water-use efficiency has yet to be accomplished. Here, we review the efforts to harness transpiration efficiency (TE); that is, the genetic component of water-use efficiency. As TE is difficult to measure, especially in the field, evaluations of TE have relied mostly on surrogate traits, although this has most likely resulted in over-dependence on the surrogates. A new lysimetric method for assessing TE gravimetrically throughout the entire cropping cycle has revealed high genetic variation in different cereals and legumes. Across species, water regimes, and a wide range of genotypes, this method has clearly established an absence of relationships between TE and total water use, which dismisses previous claims that high TE may lead to a lower production potential. More excitingly, a tight link has been found between these large differences in TE in several crops and attributes of plants that make them restrict water losses under high vapour-pressure deficits. This trait provides new insight into the genetics of TE, especially from the perspective of plant hydraulics, probably with close involvement of aquaporins, and opens new possibilities for achieving genetic gains via breeding focused on this trait. Last but not least, small amounts of water used in specific periods of the crop cycle, such as during grain filling, may be critical. We assessed the efficiency of water use at these critical stages.

High temperatures and decreased rainfall are detrimental to yield in chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.), particularly during grain filling. This study aimed to (i) assess the individual and combined effects of drought and heat stress on biochemical seed-filling processes, (ii) determine genotypic differences in heat and drought tolerance, and (iii) determine any cross-tolerance. Plants were grown outdoors in the normal growing season when temperatures during seed filling were <32−20°C or were planted late (temperatures >32−20°C; heat stress). Half of the pots were kept adequately watered throughout, but water was withheld from the others from the initiation of seed filling until the relative leaf water content reached 50% of the irrigated plants (drought stress); all plants were rewatered thereafter until seed maturit. Water was withheld for 13 days (normal sowing) and 7 days (late sowing), so soil moisture decreased by 54–57%. Tests on leaves and seeds were performed after the stress. Individual and combined stress damaged membranes, and decreased cellular oxidising ability, stomatal conductance, PSII function and leaf chlorophyll content; damage was greater under combined stress. Leaf Rubisco activity increased with heat stress, decreased with drought stress and decreased severely with combined stress. Sucrose and starch concentrations decreased in all seeds through reductions in biosynthetic enzymes; reductions were greater under combined stress. These effects were more severe in heat- and drought-sensitive genotypes compared with drought-tolerant genotypes. Drought stress had a greater effect than heat stress on yield and the biochemical seed-filling mechanisms. Drought- and heat-tolerant genotypes showed partial cross-tolerance.

Molecular markers and genetic linkage maps are pre-requisites for molecular breeding in any crop species. In case of peanut or groundnut (Arachis hypogaea L.), an amphidiploid (4X) species, not a single genetic map is, however, available based on a mapping population derived from cultivated genotypes. In order to develop a genetic linkage map for tetraploid cultivated groundnut, a total of 1,145 microsatellite or simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers available in public domain as well as unpublished markers from several sources were screened on two genotypes, TAG 24 and ICGV 86031 that are parents of a recombinant inbred line mapping population. As a result, 144 (12.6%) polymorphic markers were identified and these amplified a total of 150 loci. A total of 135 SSR loci could be mapped into 22 linkage groups (LGs). While six LGs had only two SSR loci, the other LGs contained 3 (LG_AhXV) to 15 (LG_AhVIII) loci. As the mapping population used for developing the genetic map segregates for drought tolerance traits, phenotyping data obtained for transpiration, transpiration efficiency, specific leaf area and SPAD chlorophyll meter reading (SCMR) for 2 years were analyzed together with genotyping data. Although, 2-5 QTLs for each trait mentioned above were identified, the phenotypic variation explained by these QTLs was in the range of 3.5-14.1%. In addition, alignment of two linkage groups (LGs) (LG_AhIII and LG_AhVI) of the developed genetic map was shown with available genetic maps of AA diploid genome of groundnut and Lotus and Medicago. The present study reports the construction of the first genetic map for cultivated groundnut and demonstrates its utility for molecular mapping of QTLs controlling drought tolerance related traits as well as establishing relationships with diploid AA genome of groundnut and model legume genome species. Therefore, the map should be useful for the community for a variety of applications.

SummaryExtensive and deep root systems have been recognized as one of the most important traits for improving chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) productivity under progressively receding soil moisture conditions. However, available information on the range of variation for root traits is still limited. Genetic variability for the root traits was investigated using a cylinder culture system during two consecutive growth seasons in the mini-core germplasm collection of ICRISAT plus several wild relatives of chickpea. The largest genetic variability was observed at 35 days after sowing for root length density (RLD) (heritability, h 2 = 0.51 and 0.54) across seasons, and followed by the ratio of plant dry weight to root length density with h 2 of 0.37 and 0.47 for first and second season, respectively. The root growth of chickpea wild relatives was relatively poor compared to C. arietinum, except in case of C. reticulatum. An outstanding genotype, ICC 8261, which had the largest RLD and one of the deepest root system, was identified in chickpea mini-core germplasm collection. The accession ICC 4958 which was previously characterized as a source for drought avoidance in chickpea was confirmed as one with the most prolific and deep root system, although many superior accessions were also identified. The chickpea landraces collected from the Mediterranean and the west Asian region showed a significantly larger RLD than those from the south Asian region. In addition, the landraces originating from central Asia (former Soviet Union), characterized by arid agro-climatic conditions, also showed relatively larger RLD. As these regions are underrepresented in the chickpea collection, they might be interesting areas for further germplasm exploration to identify new landraces with large RLD. The information on the genetic variability of chickpea root traits provides valuable baseline knowledge for further progress on the selection and breeding for drought avoidance root traits in chickpea.