Role of Epigenetics in Crop Improvement: Water and Heat Stress
Saurabh Saraswat, Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology, Allahabad, India | Alok Kumar Yadav, Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology, Allahabad, India | Preeti Sirohi, Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology, Allahabad, India | Nand K. Singh, Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology, Allahabad, India
Overall transcriptomic activity of an organism is determined not only by its genetic makeup but also by epigenetic regulations. Reprogramming by epigenetic modification triggered by various environmental challenges contributes to the phenotypic diversity and defense against these challenges. Different stresses acts as stimulus and changes genic expression level by various mechanisms namely DNA methylation, histone modifications and miRNA. Epigenetics is a continuously progressing branch since the past two decades. Improvement of crop varieties with traditional breeding methods is tedious, time consuming, expensive and is unable to meet progressive living standards and demand in today’s world whereas epigenetics holds great potential for the improvement of plant varieties with respect to yield and nutritional quality by creation of novel epialleles, transgenic RNAi. RNA interference has been used for the improvement of several crops like barley, wheat, soybean etc by reduction of various anti-nutritive factors or enhancement of flavor. Silencing of Omega - 3 fatty acid desaturase gene is achieved using RNAi technology for the reduction of linoleic acid and improvement of flavor. HvTX1 from barley shows increased expression during drought stress indicating its active role in drought tolerance which further can be exploited for the development of improved crop variety with increased drought tolerance. Also multiple HAT genes in rice are reported to be actively expressed under heat and water stress. Studies of epigenetic responses to different stresses can increase our understanding of plant stress adaptation and mechanism underlying them which can be further exploited for the development of improved crop varieties.
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