Editorial: Leveraging genomics, phenomics, and plant biotechnology approaches for improving abiotic and biotic stress tolerance in cereals and legumes

Abstract

'Muthusamy Ramakrishnan' 'Humira Sonah' 'Hans- Joerg Jacobsen'] Climate change poses new threats to plant production as environmental stresses increase significantly. Biotic and abiotic stress that have adverse effects on plant growth and crop productivity and can be major constraints on yield. This will particularly affect major food crops, including legumes and cereals. Biotic and abiotic stresses, such as salinity, drought, chemical toxicity, extreme temperatures and oxidative stress are often interrelated and become serious threats to agriculture. These extreme conditions induce cellular damage and disruption of plant growth and development by a series of morphological, physiological, biochemical and molecular changes. For example, these extreme stresses are often leading to oxidative damage and excessive creation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in plant cells. Usually, plants interact with these extreme conditions by their innate antioxidative defense system that including enzyme and non-enzyme elements ([3]). However, in most cases the plants’ innate antioxidant systems is insufficient to detoxify it and protect themselves from the negatives of biotic and abiotic stresses. The most obvious stress symptoms are the losing of osmotic responsiveness and wilting. Therefore, enhancing the productivity of these important crops is important for the food security of growing populations worldwide. High heterozygosity imposes severe limitations on breeding new varieties of major food crops with desired traits. Conventional plant breeding and genetic research have significantly evolved in recent decades. However, to meet the growing human population’s food demand, especially for major staple cereal and legume crops, genetic gain must be enhanced, making it necessary to exploit genetic diversity within cultivated crops and wild relatives. With modern technologies, plant breeders can use these additional resources of diversity to address problems like biotic and abiotic stresses and yield by combining methods from genomics, and advanced analytics in cereal and legume breeding programs on a massive scale.