Climate change is having direct effects on agriculture and food production. Drought is a major agricultural challenge in worldwide leading to reduced productivity and even crop failure. Therefore, an urgent need exists to find drought-resilient crops and crop varieties. Drought-resilient agriculture is an approach to achieve long-term higher productivity and farm incomes under limited water and drought conditions. Crops like cassava, chickpea, common bean, cowpea, groundnut, millet, rice, sweet potato, sorghum, wheat, and yam are important parts of this agriculture approach, and plant breeders should be focused on developing new cultivars carrying desired traits such as early flowering, high yield and high quality under droughty environments.
Further studies with an agronomic perspective are needed in different crops and genotypes that are adaptable to droughty conditions, and functional characterization of genes should also be taken into consideration in these investigations. As the cost of sequencing continues to decline, the reduced representation libraries (RRLs) approaches, such as GBS, RAD-Seq, ddRADSeq, and whole-genome sequencing, are now being integrated into breeding studies to identify higher numbers of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) to provide denser genomic maps. QTL mapping through RRLs provides an opportunity to find the genomic location of various desired traits. The identified QTLs for phenotypic and quality traits under drought conditions can then be used for marker-assisted selection (MAS) to offer new opportunities to improve the selection process for certain drought-resilient crops, such as sorghum, peanut, wheat, millet, and chickpea.
In this Research Topic, we welcome Original Research, Reviews, and Methods contributions on current knowledge and approaches that facilitate climate-resilient crop breeding in drought conditions in the following categories:
1) Exploring QTLs for major traits contributing to drought resistance in climate-resilient crops
2) Biotechnological approaches to struggle with drought stress
3) Genomic characterization and marker analyses for plant sensitivity and tolerance to drought
4) Transcriptional changes under limited water conditions
Please note: Frontiers in Plant Science does not accept solely descriptive studies - studies which report responses to treatments and descriptive reports of ‘Omics studies will not be considered if they do not progress biological understanding of these responses.
Climate change is having direct effects on agriculture and food production. Drought is a major agricultural challenge in worldwide leading to reduced productivity and even crop failure. Therefore, an urgent need exists to find drought-resilient crops and crop varieties. Drought-resilient agriculture is an approach to achieve long-term higher productivity and farm incomes under limited water and drought conditions. Crops like cassava, chickpea, common bean, cowpea, groundnut, millet, rice, sweet potato, sorghum, wheat, and yam are important parts of this agriculture approach, and plant breeders should be focused on developing new cultivars carrying desired traits such as early flowering, high yield and high quality under droughty environments.
Further studies with an agronomic perspective are needed in different crops and genotypes that are adaptable to droughty conditions, and functional characterization of genes should also be taken into consideration in these investigations. As the cost of sequencing continues to decline, the reduced representation libraries (RRLs) approaches, such as GBS, RAD-Seq, ddRADSeq, and whole-genome sequencing, are now being integrated into breeding studies to identify higher numbers of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) to provide denser genomic maps. QTL mapping through RRLs provides an opportunity to find the genomic location of various desired traits. The identified QTLs for phenotypic and quality traits under drought conditions can then be used for marker-assisted selection (MAS) to offer new opportunities to improve the selection process for certain drought-resilient crops, such as sorghum, peanut, wheat, millet, and chickpea.
In this Research Topic, we welcome Original Research, Reviews, and Methods contributions on current knowledge and approaches that facilitate climate-resilient crop breeding in drought conditions in the following categories:
1) Exploring QTLs for major traits contributing to drought resistance in climate-resilient crops
2) Biotechnological approaches to struggle with drought stress
3) Genomic characterization and marker analyses for plant sensitivity and tolerance to drought
4) Transcriptional changes under limited water conditions
Please note: Frontiers in Plant Science does not accept solely descriptive studies - studies which report responses to treatments and descriptive reports of ‘Omics studies will not be considered if they do not progress biological understanding of these responses.
