Plant physiological paradigm in fostering agro- and bio-technology

The physiological principles and practices have been the basis for developing most of agro- and biotechnologies used in crop production and improvement. The agrotechnologies which are based on physiological paradigm are: depth of sowing/planting, seed rate, fertilizer requirement, irrigation scheduling, abiotic stress management, vegetative propagation, inter and multistoried cropping, pruning of shoot and roots, pre and post harvest management of flower, seed, fruit etc. Plant physiological paradigms have given the birth to weed science, environmental science and seed science/seed technology. The dwarf plant type concept for achieving higher yield, which in fact, brought green revolution was proposed by physiologists. Synchronization of flowering for crop breeding is solely dependent on physiological paradigm. The modern days biotechnology, but for, the plant physiological paradigms could not have attained the success. The rejuvenation of plants, development of disease free genotypes, germplasm conservation, enzyme engineering, fuel biotechnology, transgenic plants for yield, quality, prolonged storability and stress tolerance, chloroplast and mitochondrial transgenics, productions of metabolites, environmental biotechnology etc. have become feasible due to plant physiological paradigms. The challenges ahead and steps to combat the problems of productivity, breaking yield plateau and sustaining yield, quality and storability are discussed.