Mutation Breeding to Promote Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security in the Era of Climate Change

Abstract

Globally, sustainable agriculture and food production systems face unprecedented challenges from population expanse, declining land, and water resources besides climate change. Climate change-driven factors like variation in temperature and precipitation patterns, the spread of drought and salinity on farmlands, increasing soil and water pollution, global warming due to rising carbon dioxide concentrations and extreme temperatures have shown tremendous impact on plant growth, development, and productivity of crop plants. Utmost attention is needed to develop and adopt effective, novel plant breeding technologies including mutation breeding, molecular marker-assisted selection, and genetically modified and gene-edited crops. Induced mutations have played an influential role in meeting challenges of food security through the development and adoption of new mutant varieties by the farming community in several countries. As on date, 3402 mutant varieties have been released worldwide as registered on the IAEA mutant variety database. A wide range of genetic variability for attributes related to plant type, yield, and stress tolerance has been induced for use in plant breeding and crop improvement programs. The mutant resources are now continually developed for creating new mutant germplasm for use in cro improvement and, in functional genomics studies. In the past few years, advanced mutagenic tools of gene discovery and genome editing have emerged as the novel plant breeding technologies. The introduction of precise genetic changes in the target genes using genome editing has been fairly successful in the improvement of crop plants. Continued research and prioritization will foster further development of efficient mutagenesis, screening protocols and high-throughput phenotyping methods for use in crop improvement programs aimed at sustainable agriculture and climate resilience.

Topics & Concepts