Molecular Strategies for Identification and Deployment of Gene(s) for Abiotic Stress Tolerance in Crop Plants

We live in a momentous period for deploying plant genetic resources to meet abiotic environmental challenges to agricultural productivity and human well-being. Abiotic stresses such as drought, salinity, high and low temperatures and others limit yield and productivity of many cultivated crop plants worldwide. Conventional plant breeding techniques, though resulted in development of many abiotic stress-tolerant varieties has not provided the complete solution to this problem. The successful use of gene technology for complex crop traits and responses to stress environments remains a challenging approach despite its potential. In recent years there have been novel functional genomics approaches in the field of plant biotechnology for identifying genes through transcript profiling, mapping and cloning of QTLS and their deployment through transgenic approach and marker-assisted selection, respectively. These approaches have provided altogether new dimensions to crop improvement activities and opened up avenues for addressing some of the difficult problems hitherto highly intractable through conventional means. In this article efforts have been made to review experimental contrasting case studies reported for identification and deployment of gene(s) for the enhancement of abiotic stress tolerance in crop plants using various strategies.