Improving crop adaptations to climate change: Contextualizing the strategy

Abstract

Climatic stresses have been affecting agricultural productivity and thereby present a major challenge for the food and nutritional security. The frequency and magnitude of these stresses are projected to increase and impact the crop yields at global level as well as in India. Genetic adaptation is identified as the most crucial factor for improving productivity in future climates. Contextualization of genetic improvement for changing climates is essential to improve the crop productivity as well as to conserve the natural resources. Serious reorientation of breeding efforts is required for a comprehensive genetic improvement programme that should address the challenges of changing climates and growing demand for food and nutritional quality. The approaches to be deployed for crop improvement should include characterization of projected climatic stresses, entire germplasm with projected climatic variability as background, utilization of entire genetic diversity and deploying multipronged approaches for genetic improvement. This chapter is aimed to contextualize the issues and approaches for breeding climate resilient varieties.