Wheat Root Selections for Sustainable Production

Abstract

Global food security is at high risk due to depletion of naturalresources and climate change. In that context wheat has a pivotalposition because wheat is a major cereal. Tremendous advances in wheatimprovement had been made through above ground parts in recent yearswithout considering roots as a plant part. Existing wheat varieties havesmall and inefficient root systems that need to be replaced withextensive and efficient root system. Better roots can improveutilization of water and nutrients, and, in turn, yields. Better rootscan reduce nitrate leaching and P fixation in soil and can helpcombating environmental pollution issues. Wheat yield potential hasalmost become stagnant in developed countries and higher yield indeveloping countries cannot be achieved due to resource limitations. Asolution would be to increase photosynthetic capacity and efficiency butto support plants with higher above ground biomass, an extensive anddeep root system would be required. Research on roots and itsapplication for enhancing wheat productivity offers enormous potentialbut this area has been neglected in the past.Here we review methodological challenges in studying roots, exploitationof existing genetic variability in root traits for further geneticimprovement of wheat, and role of root data in increasing the efficiencyof modeling studies. We found that roots have always been notoriouslydifficult to study. Old methods of soil core and monolith require moretime and labor and are tidy. Advanced methods like minirhi-zotronsrequire huge initial investment and trained manpower to run thespecialized devices, thereby, making these advances in technology lessuseful for developing countries. There is a need for improvement ofdrought tolerance and efficiency of input use in wheat production byexploiting genetic variability in landraces. The progress in wheatimprovement through root traits remained a concern for scientists overdecades as conventional hybridization methods of wheat improvementcannot provide quick solutions to current problems of stagnancy inpotential yield. Advances in biotechnological tools can help to breakprevailing stagnancy in yield.