Modern Crop Improvement Approaches for Developing Abiotic Stress-Tolerance in Plants

The food grain production from the agricultural sector should be increased treble times when compared to current food grain production to face the fast growing population. However, several abiotic stresses are major reason for the reduction of food grain productivity in the agricultural sector. In this context, developing high-yielding variety alone does not fulfil the current needs and also crop varieties should be developed that enhance abiotic and biotic stress tolerance, so that much required food grain production can be achieved in both the ways, i.e., more production through high-yielding varieties and minimizing the yield loss of crops due to the environmental stress. Improved crop varieties can be developed using modern approaches such as advanced breeding methods and molecular and biotechnological methods. The most recent advancements in molecular and omic sciences may be of tremendous assistance in understanding interactions between plants and their environment, and the essential elements contributing to resistance to abiotic stresses. Marker-assisted breeding (MAS), random mutagenesis, transgenic technology, wide hybridisation, antisense RNA technology, and genome editing technology are a few of the promising techniques for enhancing resistance or tolerance for any types of stress in agricultural crops. These cutting-edge methods for the crop development will successfully assist in overcoming the main production limitations of agricultural crops. The employment of these contemporary strategies will be more convincing and beneficial in boosting the food grains production and meeting future needs. This chapter goes into great depth regarding a number of viable contemporary ways for creating plants with resistant to abiotic stress.