Breeding for Drought Tolerance in Rice: Progress, Achievements and Future Perspectives in India

Rice is one of the most important food crops of the world but its production consumes about 50% of the total fresh water resources and is easily affected by drought especially in the upland rainfed area. In the era of fresh water depletion and climate change, a crop like rice suffers to the maximum extent than any other crop. Breeding for drought tolerance started a way back since drought is not a recent threat. Direct selection for yield under water-stress, selection through secondary traits associated with drought tolerance ability, marker assisted selection (MAS) and most recently transgenic and functional genomics are the approaches for enhancing drought tolerance. Being a developing country, India is still in the infancy in the transgenic and function genomics approach for addressing the drought tolerance issue in rice. Even then a lot have been achieved in India through conventional approaches and recently through MAS. The present review consolidates in brief the progress, achievements and future perspectives of drought tolerance research in India.