Agronomically relevant traits transferred to major crop plants by alien introgressions

Abstract

Extensive selection for increased crop productivity resulted in increased frequency of extreme traits that eroded diversity for a number of plant attributes making the present day crop genotypes vulnerable to changes in environmental conditions, biotic and abiotic stresses. The early domesticates and wild relatives of crop plants are rich sources of diversity and exhibit better performance under harsh climatic conditions as well as under high pathogen loads. The plant breeders have realized the need of broadening the genetic base of cultivated genotypes and have made genuine efforts to explore alien-diversity to breed genotypes for challenging environmental conditions, improved yield and quality. It is evident from these efforts that incorporation of the alien chromatin into the cultivated background is an important tool to improve plant productivity. In this chapter, we deal with available sources of diversity, methods of alien introgression, available breeding material and itsimplications in characterization of the alien genes, successful examples of alienintrogression and their contribution to the crop improvement.