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Abiotic Stress Management for Resilient Agriculture pp 299–312Cite as

Biotechnological Applications for Improvement of Drought Tolerance

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Abstract

Biotechnology has contributed significantly toward understanding the fundamentals of plant biology. It is steadily making headway in to the agricultural sector for improving quality and sustaining yield under different environmental stress conditions. However, progress in developing transgenic plants with enhanced drought tolerance is relatively slow. Drought tolerance is a quantitative trait. Plants respond to water deficit by different physiological, molecular, and biochemical mechanisms. Several genes and gene networks have been identified and have been shown to confer drought tolerance in different plant species. However, most of these studies on drought tolerance are limited to controlled conditions of lab or greenhouses. There are a few studies where evaluation of transgenic plants has been carried out in field or near-field conditions, and yield advantage has been demonstrated under drought stress. Since performance of crop plants under field condition is essential, this article describes studies on evaluation of transgenic crop plants for drought tolerance under field conditions.

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Acknowledgment

Authors are thankful to the Indian Council of Agricultural Research for financial assistance to various research programmes at NRCPB.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. ICAR-National Research Centre on Plant Biotechnology, Pusa Campus, New Delhi, 110012, India

    Monika Dalal & T. R. Sharma

Authors
  1. Monika Dalal
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  2. T. R. Sharma
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Correspondence to T. R. Sharma .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. National Institute of Abiotic Stress Management, Indian Council for Agricultural Research, Baramati, Maharashtra, India

    Paramjit Singh Minhas

  2. National Institute of Abiotic Stress Management , Indian Council for Agricultural Research, Baramati, Maharashtra, India

    Jagadish Rane

  3. Indian Council for Agricultural Research, National Institute of Abiotic Stress Management, Baramati, Maharashtra, India

    Ratna Kumar Pasala

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© 2017 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

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Dalal, M., Sharma, T.R. (2017). Biotechnological Applications for Improvement of Drought Tolerance. In: Minhas, P., Rane, J., Pasala, R. (eds) Abiotic Stress Management for Resilient Agriculture. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-5744-1_13

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