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Genetic Resources for Drought Resistance

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Book cover Plant Breeding for Water-Limited Environments

Summary

There is no comprehensive listing of genetic resources and potential donors for drought resistance. Sporadic data may sometime be found in seed banks but the quality of the data is uncertain. This chapter attempts to present the available groups of actual and potential genetic resources as derived from past and current literature. Five groups are recognized. These are listed by the order of their relative genetic compatibility with cultivated breeding germplasm.

While it is to be expected that breeders tend to search for donors of drought resistance among distant germplasm, it is quite apparent today that normal agronomic breeding germplasm may often carry latent genetic variation for drought resistance and this should be the first resource of choice. Landraces from dry habitats have been used successfully in breeding for water limited environments, whether towards developing open pollinated varieties or hybrids. Wild species and progenitors of our cultivated crops were always on the agenda as possible donors for drought resistance. Attempts at using these resources have increased in recent years and this chapter evaluates their potential and real contribution. Transgenic plants are first developed as a tool in functional genomics. They can constitute a realistic step towards transferring useful genes into a target crop plant, and as such they are an important genetic resource. Their importance is increasing as their drought phenotyping improves. Lastly, resurrection plants which survive extreme desiccation under harsh environments have always excited the imagination of biologists. Research on the nature of their tolerance may open new avenues for their use as donors of important genes for drought resistance.

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  1. Tel Aviv, Israel

    Abraham Blum

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  1. Abraham Blum
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Blum, A. (2011). Genetic Resources for Drought Resistance. In: Plant Breeding for Water-Limited Environments. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-7491-4_5

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