Neo-domestication of Crop Plants for Managing Unproductive Salt-affected Lands
Neo-domestication of crop plants for salty lands
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Authors
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Avni Dahiya
ICAR – Central Soil Salinity Research Institute, Karnal–132001, Haryana, India
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Arvind Kumar
ICAR – Central Soil Salinity Research Institute, Karnal–132001, Haryana, India
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Shruti Kaushik
ICAR – Central Soil Salinity Research Institute, Karnal–132001, Haryana, India
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Sunita Devi
ICAR – Central Soil Salinity Research Institute, Karnal–132001, Haryana, India
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Adhisha
Dept. of Biotechnology, GJUS&T, Hisar-125001, Haryana, India
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Anita Mann
ICAR – Central Soil Salinity Research Institute, Karnal–132001, Haryana, India
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Ashwani Kumar
ICAR – Central Soil Salinity Research Institute, Karnal–132001, Haryana, India
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Satish K. Sanwal
ICAR – Central Soil Salinity Research Institute, Karnal–132001, Haryana, India
Keywords:
Genome editing tools, Neo-domestication, Salt-affected lands, Salinity tolerance, Stress-resilient cropsAbstract
Global food security is increasingly threatened by a growing population, adverse climate changes and the expansion of degraded lands including salt-affected lands. As conventional crop domestication is a lengthy and continuous process and it struggles to keep pace with emerging human needs and the demand for diverse crops. With the escalating demand for food and the necessity for a variety of crops including nutrient-dense varieties, biofuels, phytoremediation plants, and crops for bio-farming the neo-domestication has emerged as a critical strategy. This approach focuses on developing novel crop plants and enhancing the resilience and productivity of existing crops in challenging environments, particularly on unproductive, salt-affected soils. Neo-domestication leverages the genetic variability existing among the crop wild relatives (CWRs) and underutilized species to develop resilient crop varieties exhibiting improved tolerance to salinity. Understanding the mechanisms of salinity stress in crop plants and their wild relatives is vital for the physiological adaptation of existing crops to salt stress and for formulating effective management strategies. Salinity stress disrupts water uptake, ion balance, and nutrient acquisition, ultimately leading to reduced growth and yield. To address these challenges, it is imperative to incorporate salinity tolerance traits such as ion homeostasis, osmotic regulation, and stress-responsive gene expression into domesticated crops. However, wild relatives of salt-tolerant crops harboring linkage drags are sometimes difficult to be used via traditional breeding approaches. Neo-domestication offers a novel solution by combining advanced genome editing tools, such as CRISPR-Cas9, with other modern approaches like genome-wide association studies (GWAS), pan-genomics, thereby harnessing the genetic potential of crop wild relatives (CWRs). This approach enables the precise modification of specific genes associated with undesired traits in crop wild relatives, including shattering, anti-nutritional factors, and crossing barriers, rendering them suitable for development as new crops or as germplasm in breeding programs. Several wild relatives exhibit salt-stress tolerance, which can be used to accelerate the development of crops capable of thriving in saline environments. Additionally, exploring alternative crops that inherently tolerate high salinity opens new avenues for cultivation in saline conditions with diverse applications.
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