Biosafety Aspects of Genetically Modified Crops

With the advancement in the field of agricultural biotechnology, many genetically modified crops like Bt- cotton, Bt- brinjal have been developed and commercialised to fulfil the need of the world population. Several biosafety concerns viz., risk to human health, risk to environment, ecological concern o has been raised after the rapid commercialization of GM crops every year across the world. As per Convention on biodiversity (CBD), Biosafety is a term used to describe efforts to reduce and eliminate the potential risk resulting from biotechnology and its product. Though many concerns being raised time to time, strict biosafety guideline must be followed before introducing a GM crop in public domain especially in resource poor developing countries

A review on conventional and modern breeding approaches for developing climate resilient crop varieties: NA

The escalating threat of climate change is a major challenge to global food security. One of the ways to mitigate its impact is by developing crops that can withstand environmental stresses such as drought, heat, and salinity. Plant breeders have been employing conventional and modern approaches to achieve climate-resilient crops. Climate-resilient crops refer to both crop and crop varieties that exhibit improved tolerance towards biotic and abiotic stresses. These crops possess the capacity to maintain or even increase their yields when exposed to various stress conditions, such as drought, flood, heat, chilling, freezing and salinity. Conventional breeding entails selecting and crossing plants with desirable traits, while modern breeding deploys molecular techniques to identify and transfer specific genes associated with stress tolerance. However, the effectiveness of both methods is contingent on the crop species and the targeted stress. Advancements in gene editing, such as CRISPER-cas9  and genomics-assisted breeding, offer new opportunities to hasten the development of climate-resilient crops. These new technologies include Marker Assisted Selection, Genome-Wide Association Studies, Mutation breeding, Transcriptomics, Genomics, and more. The review concludes that these cutting-edge techniques have the potential to enhance the speed and precision of developing crops that can endure the challenges posed by climate change

Analysis of Genetic Variability, Correlation and Path for Yield and Its Attributing Traits in Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)

The current study was undertaken to analyze the genetic variability, correlation and path for yield and its attributing traits at agriculture research farm, Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding, School of Agriculture, Lovely Professional University, Punjab during during Rabi 2021-22 and 2022-23. Augmented design with F2 seeds planted in ear to row fashion in 4 rows were used to study variability, correlation and path including 2 parent and its 6 F2’s  for the 9 traits viz. plant height, spike length, number of tillers per plant, number of spikes per plant, number of spikelets per ear, number of grains per ear, biological yield, harvest index and grain yield.  Finding revealed that grain yield revealed positive and highly significant correlation with number of tillers per plant (rp= 0.8387, rg= 0.8709) and biological yield (rp= 0.9671, rg= 0.9965) while positive and significant correlation with Number of spikes per plant (rp= 0.7168, rg= 0.7253) at both phenotypic and genotypic level. Biological yield per plant revealed highest positive direct effect (1.0642, 0.8700) with significant association with grain yield (0.9965, 0.9671) whereas Number of tillers reveals least positive direct effect on grain yield (0.0183, 0.0834) at both genotypic and phenotypic level. PCV was higher than GCV for all the traits indicated an influence of environment over the traits. Number of spikelets per ear recorded highest PCV and GCV followed by Grain yield. Heritability (h2b) found higher for grain yield (84.2) followed by Number of spikelets per ear (83.4), Number of Grains per ear (82.7) and Plant height (80.1). Genetic advance (GA) recorded higher Number of spikelets per ear (35.07) followed by Grain yield (11.93). Moderate GA recorded for Plant Height (7.67) and Biological yield (6.88) whereas Spike length (0.62) recorded lowest GA. Hence, selection for these mentioned characters could bring improvement in yield and yield components

A Review on Understanding the Effects and Mechanisms of Salinity Tolerance in Rice (Oryza sativa L.)

Salinity, along with drought, is one of the key abiotic stressors that has posed a danger to the advancement and evolution of cereal crops like rice and wheat. Water shortage and a lack of irrigation water availability are the main causes of salty soil formation. Rice is salt sensitive and glycophyte, wheat is moderately salt tolerant. Wild tolerant cultivars like Oryza coarctata and Oryza alta are more tolerant than traditional cultivars such as Pokkali and Nona Bokra in rice. Salt stress affects crop plants’ processes like ionic imbalance, osmotic and oxidative stress. Na+ should be low in the shoots of the plant which is restricted by various transporters in the cell membrane of the roots in soil. High K+ & Na+/K+ homeostasis should be maintained. Many RILs and NILs have been developed which acts as a donor for salinity tolerant genes. FL478 is a recombinant inbred line in which candidate genes are situated in the Saltol region of chromosome 1 region which is obtained by a cross between Pokkali x IR29. Increase in world’s population, rice output must be increased by at least 25% by 2030 and 50% by 2050.Salinity stress is a polygenic character which involves several genes works in harmony. For evolution of salinity tolerant cultivars, we need to access the physiological, biochemical genetic responses of the crop plant which helps in transfer of candidate genes from donor parents to elite high yielding salt sensitive cultivars. Especially in rice salt tolerant mechanisms like, Ion equilibrium regulation, Adjustment of osmotic potential, Reduction of ROS, Nutrient disequilibrium, and Regulation of PGRs. Conventional, MABC, MAS and direct gene transfer by transgenic methods. This review paper's main objective is to understand the mechanisms of the crop plants to salinity effects and development of salt tolerant cultivars by modern approaches which fulfill the food scarcity of staple food crops with increasing population