Strengthening desert plant biotechnology research in the United Arab Emirates: a viewpoint

Abstract

The biotechnology of desert plants is a vast subject. The main applications in this broad field of study comprises of plant tissue culture, genetic engineering, molecular markers and others. Biotechnology applications have the potential to address biodiversity conservation as well as agricultural, medicinal, and environmental issues. There is a need to increase our knowledge of the genetic diversity through the use of molecular genetics and biotechnological approaches in desert plants in the Arabian Gulf region including those in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This article provides a prospective research for the study of UAE desert plant diversity through DNA fingerprinting as well as understanding the mechanisms of both abiotic stress resistance (including salinity, drought and heat stresses) and biotic stress resistance (including disease and insect resistance). Special attention is given to the desert halophytes and their utilization to alleviate the salinity stress, which is one of the major challenges in agriculture. In addition, symbioses with microorganisms are thought to be hypothesized as important components of desert plant survival under stressful environmental conditions. Thus, factors shaping the diversity and functionality of plant microbiomes in desert ecosystems are also emphasized in this article. It is important to establish a critical mass for biotechnology research and applications while strengthening the channels for collaboration among research/academic institutions in the area of desert plant biotechnology.

Microbial Diversity of Upland Rice Roots and Their Influence on Rice Growth and Drought Tolerance

“…Under such circumstances, plant-related microbes that can improve the drought tolerance of crops have attracted increased amounts of attention [ 33 , 49 , 77 , 78 , 79 ]. Scientists have isolated rhizospheric and endophytic bacteria and fungi from arid regions or from xerophytes, and these microbes have been shown to improve the growth of rice, sorghum, corn, cabbage, millet, and wheat under drought-stress conditions [ 14 , 80 , 81 , 82 , 83 , 84 ]. There is abundant evidence that root-associated microbes can help sustain plant growth under drought conditions [ 12 , 18 ].…”

Assessment of coastal salt marsh plants on the Arabian Gulf region

“…Any other language was excluded. And all types of documents (e.g., Article papers, books, book chapters, notes, short communications, and correspondence) were included, except for “Review papers” as the aim of this paper was to estimate the total number of families, genera and species of all published papers, although there were not many review papers as there were only three review papers ( Cybulska et al, 2014a , Cybulska et al, 2014b , Brown et al, 2018a , Brown et al, 2018b , Gairola et al, 2018 ). Moreover, the gray mangrove Avicennia marina was excluded from this targeted search.…”

Halophytes and the Future of Agriculture

“…All halophytes exhibit a common pathway to regulate cellular ion concentrations (Na + , Cl À , and K + ) to maintain water potential. It will be possible to evaluate that halophytes in respect to "salt-tolerance genes" to transfer to glycophytes (Zhu 2000;Gairola et al 2018). Although halophytes can adjust themselves to sudden changes in external salinity over a period of 24-48 h (Clipson and Flowers 1987;Hasegawa et al 2000), it still needs to be evaluated in detail how changes in turgor pressure can be rapidly transmitted throughout plants (Bartels and Sunkar 2005;Chinnusamy et al 2005).…”

“…Other subjects such as tissue culture studies and micropropagation are also important tools that take great parts in this area (Hahn et al 2013;Gupta and Huang 2014;Garg et al 2016;Mosa et al 2017). For example, Phoenix dactylifera (date palms), one of the most important crops in the Arab Gulf Region, has received increasing attention in micropropagation studies (Al-Khalifah 2004;Al-Khayri 2007Gairola 2018). The majority of studies have concentrated on plant breeding studies that target increases in annual yields (Giliham et al 2016).…”