Stress physiology: abiotic stresses
Transgenics will provide a significant stream of variety improvements in some sugarcane breeding programs and molecular markers will complement transgenics and classical breeding for developing varieties that can tolerate abiotic stresses.
Abstract
Plants are sessile organisms and have necessarily evolved various strategies to cope with changing, and sometimes extreme, environments while meeting the resource demands to grow and complete their life cycle. Transgenics will provide a significant stream of variety improvements in some sugarcane breeding programs. Molecular markers will complement transgenics and classical breeding for developing varieties that can tolerate abiotic stresses. Culm elongation is the most sensitive morphological change in sugarcane affected by water stress. Plant adaptation to salinity stress includes both osmotic and ionic stress tolerance. With increasing sodicity, soil physical properties deteriorate causing poor drainage. In sugarcane low temperature stress has been studied in relation to bud sprouting, tillering, photosynthesis, culm growth, dry matter partitioning, juice quality, and gene expression and introgression to improve tolerance to chilling and freezing.