Popular Article

Sharma et al., BR/02/18/05

Biomolecule Reports ISSN:2456-8759

Breeding Strategies for Abiotic Stress Tolerance in Vegetable Crops

Shweta Sharma1*, Dharminder Kumar2, Sandeep Kumar3 and Nidhish Gautam4
1
Department of Vegetable Science and Floriculture, CSKHPKV, Palampur-176062
2
Dr YS Parmar University of Horticulture and Forestry, Nauni, Solan-173 230, HP, India
3,4
ICAR, IARI Regional Station, Katrain, Kullu-175129
Corresponding author’s email:shwetasharma15123@gmail.com
Introduction
For many years, plant breeders focused on breeding for biotic stresses but climate
change and consequently appearance of abiotic stresses has shifted the plant breeders’
priority towards breeding for abiotic stresses recently. Vegetables are important sources
of many nutrients, including potassium, dietary fiber, folate, vitamin A, and vitamin C. The
vegetable crops are short duration crops and has a very specific edephic and climatic
requirement to complete each and every phase of the production cycle. Thus the effects of
abiotic stresses are more pronounced in vegetables. Abiotic stress is the primary cause of
crop loss worldwide, reducing average yields for most of the major vegetable crops. Adverse
environmental conditions such as drought, high soil salinity and temperature extremes are
important abiotic stresses are the major limiting factors in sustaining and increasing vegetable
productivity. Vegetables are more sensitive to drought as compare to many other crops.
Improving yield under drought is a major goal of plant breeding. Vegetables play a crucial
role in ensuring food and nutritional security, but they are highly perishable and their prices
rise fast under situations like droughts or floods, putting them out of reach of the poor. So,
those breeding strategies should be adopted which may be used to get maximum crop stand
and economic returns from stressful environments. According to Varshney et al., (2011)
biotechnology can be utilized as an integrated approach for developing crops that are better
adapted to abiotic stresses.
Grafting of vegetables can protect against abiotic stresses. One way to avoid or reduce
losses in production caused by adverse soil chemical and physical conditions and
environmental stresses in vegetables would be to graft them onto rootstocks capable of
reducing the effect of external causes on the shoot. (Schwarz et al., 2010). Vegetable
germplasm with tolerance to drought, high temperatures and other environmental stresses,

Biomolecule Reports- An International eNewsletter BR/02/18/05

and ability to maintain yield in marginal soils must be identified to serve as sources of these
traits for both public and private sector vegetable breeding programmes.
Conclusion:
Development of resistant or tolerant cultivars is one of the best options to minimize
the losses due to abiotic stresses. Those strategies should be adopted which may be used to
get maximum crop stand and economic returns from stressful environments. Plant breeders
need to broaden the genetic base and must include wild relatives, landraces, and exotic
germplasm of crops in their hybridization programs, as these have genes of resistance against
various abiotic stresses. The effects of abiotic stress on crop productivity is expected to
increase. The crop plants have evolved certain resistance mechanism against abiotic stress,
we should identify those mechanisms and traits and introgress them into susceptible
genotypes. Only conventional breeding is not sufficient in development of stress tolerant
variety. Modern plant breeding methods like transgenic approach, somaclonal variation and
Marker Assisted breeding have great potential to be used in future for breeding crops against
abiotic stresses.
References :-

Schwarz D, Rouphael Y, Colla G and Venema JH. 2010. Grafting as a tool to improve
tolerance of vegetables to abiotic stresses: Thermal stress, water stress and organic
pollutants Scientia Horticulturae 125: 162-171.

Varshney RK, Bansal KC, Aggrwal PK, Datta SK and Craufurd PQ. 2011. Agricultural
biotechnology for crop improvement in a variable climate: hope or hype?. Trends in Plant
Science 16(7): 363-371.