Colchicine-Induced Polyploidy in Leguminous Crops Enhances Morpho-Physiological Characteristics for Drought Stress Tolerance

Abstract

Legumes play a significant role in the alleviation of food insecurity, maintaining soil fertility, and achieving sustainable crop production under adverse environmental conditions. The increased demand in legume production contemplates that attention on the genetic improvement of these crops through various means such as genetic engineering and mutation breeding should take a centre stage in global agriculture. Therefore, this paper provides a succinct analysis of the currently available literature on morphological and physiological traits in polyploidised leguminous plants to counter the adverse effects of drought stress. The effects of colchicine on various morphological and physiological traits of polyploidised legumes compared to their diploid counterparts were examined. Numerous reports revealed variations in these traits, such as improved root and shoot growth, plant biomass, chloroplastidic content, protein, RNA, and DNA. The differences observed were also associated with the strong relationship between plant ploidy induction and colchicine application. Furthermore, the analysis indicated that polyploidisation remains dose-dependent and may be achievable within a shorter space of time as this antimitotic chemical interferes with chromosome separations in somatic plant cells. The efficiency of this process also depends on the advancement of treatment conditions (in vitro, in vivo, or ex vitro) and the successful regeneration of polyploidised plants for adaptation under drought stress conditions. As such, the improvement in metabolite profile and other essential growth characteristics serves as a clear indication that induced polyploidy needs to be further explored to confer resilience to environmental stress and improve crop yield under drought stress conditions in leguminous plants.

The effect of colchicine treatment on phenotype and genotype characteristics of Detam-2 variety of soybean Glycine max

“…The increase in seed weight in mutant-1 was 110.38%. This result was in line with Mangena and Mushadu (2023), where colchicine increased in leguminous crops enhances morpho-physiological. Observations of the moisture content in wet weight showed no significant difference between the control sample and mutants.…”

Multi-Omics Analysis of Gene and microRNA Expression in Diploid and Autotetraploid Poplar under Drought Stress by Transcriptome, microRNA, and Degradome Sequencing

“…Numerous studies have reported that polyploidization might notably promote plant tolerance to drought stress [36,37], which may lead to better breeding and improvement strategies. However, the molecular mechanism for increased tolerance to drought in poplar polyploids remain unclear.…”