Plant Breeding For Stress Environments

This publication opens with the inevitable introduction, moves on to the present traditional approach to breeding for yield stability, and then enumerates a detailed discussion of the physiological approach to breeding for resistance to specific stresses. Not all environmental stresses are covered, omitting those for which little can be said today on practical breeding solutions.

This volume will be the only existing single-authored book offering a science-based breeder’s manual directed at breeding for water-limited environments. Plant breeding is characterized by the need to integrate information from diverse disciplines towards the development and delivery of a product defines as a new cultivar. Conventional breeding draws information from disciplines such as genetics, plant physiology, plant pathology, entomology, food technology and statistics. Plant breeding for water-limited environments and the development of drought resistant crop cultivars is considered as one of the more difficult areas in plant breeding while at the same time it is becoming a very pressing issue. This volume is unique and timely in that it develops realistic solutions and protocols towards the breeding of drought resistant cultivars by integrating knowledge from environmental science, plant physiology, genetics and molecular biology.

The rapid population growth and the increase in the per capita income, especially in the group of emerging countries referred to as BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) has created huge pressure for the expansion of the agricultural growing area and the crop yields to meet the rising demand. As a result, many areas that have been considered marginal for growing crops, due to their low fertility, drought, salinity, and many other abiotic stresses, have now been incorporated in the production system. Additionally, climate change has brought new challenges to agriculture to produce food, feed, fiber and biofuels. To cope with these new challenges, many plant breeding programs have reoriented their breeding scope to stress tolerance in the last years. The authors of this book have collected the most recent advances and discoveries applied to breeding for abiotic stresses in this book, starting with new physiological concepts and breeding methods, and moving on to discuss modern molecular biological approaches geared to the development of improved cultivars tolerant to most sorts of abiotic stress. Written in an easy to understand style, this book is an excellent reference work for students, scientists and farmers interested in learning how to breed for abiotic stresses scenarios, presenting the state-of-the-art in plant stresses and allowing the reader to develop a greater understanding of the basic mechanisms of tolerance to abiotic stresses and how to breed for them.

The basic concept of this book is to examine the use of innovative methods augmenting traditional plant breeding towards the development of new crop varieties under different environmental conditions to achieve sustainable food production. This book consists of two volumes: Volume 1 subtitled Breeding, Biotechnology and Molecular Tools and Volume 2 subtitled Agronomic, Abiotic and Biotic Stress Traits. This is volume 2 which contains 18 chapters highlighting breeding strategies for specific plant traits including improved nutritional and pharmaceutical properties as well as enhanced tolerance to insects, diseases, drought, salinity and temperature extremes expected under predicted global climate change.

Abiotic stresses have become an integral part of crop production. One or other persist either in soil, water or in atmosphere. The information in the areas of injury and tolerant mechanisms, variability for tolerance, breeding and biotechnology for improvement of crop plants against abiotic stresses are lying unorganized in different articles of journals and edited books. This information is presented in this book in organized way with up-to-date citations, which will provide comprehensive literatures of recent advances. More emphasis has been given to elaborate the injury and tolerance mechanisms, and development of improved genotypes against stress environments. This book also deals with the plants' symptoms of particular abiotic stress, reclamation of soil and crop/cropping pattern to over come the effect of adverse condition(s). Each has been laid out with systematic approaches to develop abiotic stress tolerant genotypes using biotechnological tools. Use of molecular markers in stress tolerance and development of transgenic also have been detailed. Air pollution and climate change are the hot topic of the days. Thus, the effect of air pollution and climate change on crop plants have been detailed in the final three s of this book. Under abiotic stress, plant produces a large quantity of free radicals (oxidants), which have been elaborated in a separate 'Oxidative Stress'. This book has been divided into seven major parts- physical stress (salt), water stresses (drought and waterlogging), temperature stresses (heat and cold), metal toxicities (aluminium, iron, cadmium, lead, nickel, chromium, copper, zinc etc) and non-metal toxicities (boron and arsenic), oxidative stress, and finally atmospheric stresses (air pollution, radiation and climate change). Hope, this book will be of greater use for the students and researchers, particularly Plant Breeders and Biotechnologists as well as the Botanists, to understand the injury and tolerance mechanisms, and subsequently improvement of crop genotypes for abiotic stresses.

Experience shows that biotic stresses occur with different levels of intensity in nearly all agricultural areas around the world. The occurrence of insects, weeds and diseases caused by fungi, bacteria or viruses may not be relevant in a specific year but they usually harm yield in most years. Global warming has shifted the paradigm of biotic stresses in most growing areas, especially in the tropical countries, sparking intense discussions in scientific forums. This book was written with the idea of collecting in a single publication the most recent advances and discoveries concerning breeding for biotic stresses, covering all major classes of biotic challenges to agriculture and food production. Accordingly, it presents the state-of-the-art in plant stresses caused by all microorganisms, weeds and insects and how to breed for them. Complementing Plant Breeding for Abiotic Stress Tolerance, this book was written for scientists and students interested in learning how to breed for biotic stress scenarios, allowing them to develop a greater understanding of the basic mechanisms of resistance to biotic stresses and develop resistant cultivars.

The mechanisms underlying endurance and adaptation to environmental stress factors in plants have long been the focus of intense research. Plants overcome environmental stresses by development of tolerance, resistance or avoidance mechanisms, adjusting to a gradual change in its environment which allows them to maintain performance across a range of adverse environmental conditions. Plant Acclimation to Environmental Stress presents the latest ideas and trends on induced acclimation of plants to environmental stresses under changing environment. Written by experts around the globe, this volume adds new dimensions in the field of plant acclimation to abiotic stress factors. Comprehensive and lavishly illustrated, Plant Acclimation to Environmental Stress is a state-of-the-art guide suited for scholars and researchers working in the field of crop improvement, genetic engineering and abiotic stress tolerance.

Gain a better understanding of the genetic and physiological bases of stress response and stress tolerance as part of crop improvement programs Abiotic Stresses: Plant Resistance Through Breeding and Molecular Approaches explores innovative methods for breeding new varieties of major crops with resistance to environmental stresses that limit crop production worldwide. Experts provide you with basic principles and techniques of plant breeding as well as work done in relation to improving resistance in specific important world food crops. This book supplies extensive bibliographies at the end of each chapter, as well as tables and figures that illustrate the research findings. Abiotic Stresses is divided into two sections. In the first section, you will find: the general principles of breeding crops for stress resistance genetic engineering and molecular biology procedures for crop improvement for stress environments data on genome mapping and its implications for improving stress resistance in plants information about breeding for resistance/tolerance to salinity, drought, flooding, metals, low nutrient availability, high/low temperatures The second section of this timely resource focuses on the efforts of acknowledged specialists who concentrated their efforts on important individual crops, such as: wheat barley rice maize oilseed crops cotton tomato This book fills a niche and interface in the available literature as it deals with all of the major stresses from a perspective of crop breeding, covering the latest advances in molecular breeding technology. Abiotic Stresses will help scientists and academics in botany, plant breeding, plant environmental stress studies, agriculture, and horticulture modify and improve breeding programs globally.