Breeding Strategies for Crop Improvement to Adapt to Global Climate Change

Abstract

Climate change is thought to be a major source of abiotic stress for crops. Changing patterns of temperature and rainfall are having an impact on the cultivation of food and other crops, with productive areas suffering from drought, flooding or extremes of temperature. To alleviate the economic impact of crop failure, research has been carried out to develop crop varieties that are more tolerant to these forms of stress through genomics-based breeding or genetic engineering. With a still rising world population, pressure on agriculture to produce more food is increasing. High-producing crops are therefore very much in demand. Abiotic stresses like drought, salinity and temperature account for most of the crop losses each year. Breeding for abiotic stress tolerance strives to contribute to our knowledge on the genetics and genomics underlying tolerance to abiotic stresses, in particular to drought and salinity. Increased understanding of the genetics on the response of crops to abiotic stresses will enable focused breeding for strengthening stress tolerance in crops. In this paper, recent advances in crop breeding for increased adaptability to global climate change, in particular warming, cold damage, drought, salinity and water logging, are discussed.