Transgenic approaches

Abstract

The everyday deteriorating environmental factors such as extremes of temperature (high and low), water availability (drought and flooding), ion or physiological pH (salinity and alkalinity), UV light and anoxia pose deleterious effects on the survival and overall yield of the plants. Since, the abiotic stresses are multigenic as well as quantitative in nature, it is far more difficult to understand the response of the plants towards these stresses. Intensive efforts are being made worldwide employing physiological, biochemical and molecular tools to raise plants with improved suitability towards environmental stresses. With the advances in recent years towards identifying the genes that are regulated under stress, and sequencing of the whole plant genomes, research is being taken up actively to understand the molecular basis of abiotic stress responses and to manipulate these processes via genetic engineering. Employing transgenic technology, functional validation of various target genes, involved in diverse processes such as signal transduction, transcriptional regulation, ion homeostasis and antioxidant defense for various abiotic stresses has been attempted in various model systems. Some of these efforts have been extended to crop plants such as rice, maize, Brassica, wheat etc. This chapter presents a brief description of the transgenic studies that have been attempted with a view to understand the role of various genes which were indicated to be important, and transfer of some of these genes to crop plants for enabling them to survive under stress conditions. © 2010 Springer Science + Business Media B.V. All Rights Reserved.