Salt Tolerant Crop Varieties and Transgenic Plant

 

Just like Humans plants also suffer from many stress factors which limit the yield potential of plants. One of the major areas in the field of genetics and plant breeding is to improve crop varieties for tackling the problem of abiotic stress like drought, salinity, Heat stress, and many more. Different types of research are going on to solve this problem by using different approaches like Transcriptomics, finding osmosensor genes, Genome editing, mutation breeding, and identifying wild varieties from which we can introduce genes in current cultivars by backcrossing or any other method.

One of the main stress which is faced by the plants is salinity, which simply means more concentration of salt in the soil. But before moving forward let's talk about some major questions you might have in your mind 

1. Why Plant can not survive in stress conditions-   Well this can be understood from the fact that when Plant absorbs minerals and nutrients from soil via water, salt also enters the plant and Due to the high concentration of salt especially NaCl, the sodium ion destroys the cellular homeostasis and increase the toxicity in the cell, due to which many enzymes and proteins unable to work properly and that part of the plant become susceptible to other damages and senescence also happen in that part. 

2. In terms of research, why we are focusing on salinity, it might be harmful to plants but there are other aspects like Disease resistance, heat stress. Is salinity is a big problem-  The severeness of this problem can be understood from the fact that worldwide- 30% of the land is affected by salinity and 50% of the land is affected by drought and the combination of these can be very dangerous, so we need to focus on this problem. We also need to understand that there can be instances when the crop is attacked by drought, salinity, and heat stress at the same time so a more interdisciplinary approach is required to solve this problem.

3. You might be wondering, what is the cause of this salinity - There can be multiple reasons for salinity Like in coastal areas saltwater can be a problem. Due to climate change, the rainfall pattern is becoming very Unpredictable and as a result, we are extracting more groundwater, which when come in contact with excess fertilizer, pesticides make the soil saline. So it's not a simple process and can be studied from a different perspective.

Now you might ask, how can we solve this problem 

Let's look at a case study

Pokkali rice in Kerela is one of the wild types of rice which have an excellent ability to tolerate salinity. When it was identified, a team led by Prof. Ashwani Pareek started to carry out the molecular and genetic investigation and the mechanism by which this variety tolerates salinity. As a result, we found that around 900 genes present on chromosome number 1 are responsible for this property and now the work is on to transfer these genes into the present cultivar.

The new cultivar might have an acronym of STRONG( STRESS TOLERANT RICE OF NEXT GENERATION)

 So many other approaches are also going on by using different breeding tools.

But there is one more area that can not be left out when we talk about the breeding for abiotic stress resistance and that is the debate related to Genetically Modified Organisms.

There are mixed opinions on this point, so I am writing my personal understanding of this issue

If we take a look at the traditional plant breeding, we are taking pollen and stigma of 2 different plants and crossing them to randomly mix their genome in the hope that we will get our desired combination. But today with the help of gene modification technologies we are more precisely manipulating a specific part of the genome rather than the whole genome, so there is not much difference, in fact, we are doing the same thing in a more systematic manner.

Let's talk about some of the checks on the GMO

Whenever there is any such experiment to be initiated for transgenic plants a lot of biosafety Committee look into it like- Institutional Biosafety Committee, Genetic engineering approval committee which constitutes different stakeholders from the scientific community to industry, lawyers as well as health professionals who look into the experiential data and then decide whether to give approval or not.

If the product is for consumption there will be toxicology tests and if it is for clothes like cotton there will be tested for allergen and environmental effect of that product. Only after passing all the tests, the transgenic plant will come into the market.

Now you might think that even if all this is safe and there are so many quality checks, WHY DO WE NEED IT, we are already having enough food grains to meet the demands of the country population then we want to focus on those gene modification techniques and other aspects of transgenic plants.

To answer this we need to think about our future, the speed at which the population is increasing is more than the rate of grain production. Additionally, due to climate change, the yield of grain crops is also very unpredictable and manpower in agriculture is also reducing, so to keep up the pace there is a need to incorporate these techniques into the current research.

However, it needs a lot more discussion on a policy level to allow these technologies and GMOs in developing countries before making a final decision in the future but at present, we need to think that its good to have new crop variety to tackle the stress problems , but the need of the hour is to have new ways of thinking to create new varieties and treating stress problems in agriculture.