Nuclear Agriculture and Biotechnology Division, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Trombay, Mumbai 400 085, India,
J Biosci. 2020;45.
Climate change and the consequential unpredictable environmental stress conditions negatively impact crop productivity. It has thus become a challenge to develop solutions for food security and sustainable agriculture in the backdrop of increasing population pressure and dwindling land and water resources. This further necessitates that focus of international research should be on curtailing yield losses through improved crop breeding practices and genetic manipulation for the development of resistant crop varieties. Plants being sessile, have developed a complex regulatory network of genetic machinery which includes transcription factors, small RNAs, signalling pathways, stress sensors and defense pathways. Needless to say, research efforts have exploited this genetic reservoir for manipulating crop plants for tolerance or resistance against different stresses. In the past few decades, significant achievement has been made for developing transgenic plants for a wide variety of single or multiple stress tolerance associated traits. Several regulatory mechanisms have been identified to fine tune and tailor the tolerance response in target sensitive crops. The advent of metabolic engineering has added new dimensions to manipulate stress tolerance pathways. Novel strategies are needed to develop stable, superior performing lines under challenging field environment without yield penalty and significant success has to be achieved to translate the research outcome from lab-to-land to reach farmer's fields.
气候变化和随之而来的不可预测的环境压力条件对作物生产力产生负面影响。因此，在人口压力不断增加和土地及水资源不断减少的背景下，如何开发解决方案以保障粮食安全和实现可持续农业，已成为一项挑战。这进一步要求国际研究的重点应放在通过改进作物育种实践和遗传操作来减少产量损失，从而开发出具有抗性的作物品种。植物是固定不动的，它们已经发展出了一个复杂的遗传机制调控网络，其中包括转录因子、小 RNA、信号通路、应激传感器和防御途径。不用说，研究工作已经利用了这个遗传资源库来操纵作物植物，以使其对不同的胁迫具有耐受性或抗性。在过去的几十年中，已经在开发用于多种单一或多种胁迫耐受性相关特性的转基因植物方面取得了重大成就。已经确定了几种调节机制，以微调和调整目标敏感作物的耐受性反应。代谢工程的出现为操纵胁迫耐受性途径增添了新的维度。需要开发新的策略来在具有挑战性的田间环境下开发稳定、表现优异的品系，而不会造成产量损失，并需要取得重大成功，才能将研究成果从实验室转化到田间，让农民受益。
