Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 9
Production of Abiotic Stress Tolerant Fertile
Transgenic Plants using Androgenesis
and Genetic Transformation Methods
in Cereal Crops
S. M. Shahinul Islam and Narendra Tuteja
1 Introduction
Various abiotic stresses such as drought, cold, and soil salinity are some of the ma-
jor environmental stress factors that adversely affect plant growth and productivity.
Of these, high salinity and drought are the major causes affecting the crop yield in
the world and increasing salinity stress is the main reason for reduced agricultural
production in the available crop lands (Tuteja
2007
; Amudha and Balasubramani
2011
). Therefore, it is very important to understand the effects on abiotic stress
response mechanisms and networks in plants. To minimize the crop losses, modern
biotechnology can be used to generate genetically-engineered plants with new and
improved characteristics. Genetic engineering is an attractive tool because of its
potential to improve abiotic stress (cold, drought, salt, heat, starvation, etc.,) toler-
ance plant varieties more rapidly (Kasuga et al.
1999
). The use of genetic engineer-
ing technology could lead to simpler and more effective gene-based approaches for
improving crop tolerance. Thus, the application of biotechnology in combination
with conventional breeding methods may help to increase food production prop-
erly. An endeavour to genetically improve the abiotic stress-tolerant crop plants,
with respect to disease resistance, drought, heat and salinity tolerance with high
yielding cultivars, may be helpful in boosting the major cereal crop production in
developing countries. Breeders have often developed cultivars with superior ad-
aptation to their environmental without the detailed knowledge of the underlying
physiological mechanisms (Kuchel et al.
2006
). Gene transfer technologies offer
