Current Approaches to Develop Drought Tolerance in Wheat

The world's population is increasing at the most rapid rate ever. It forecast that by the year 2050, the world's population will double to nearly 12 billion people. To feed this population, these people will require a staggering increase in food production. Wheat, a member of family Poaceae, was the first domesticated crop and is the youngest polyploidy species among the agricultural crops. Drought has become one of the major environmental threats that reduce grain production in different regions of the world especially in arid and semiarid regions. The meager availability of drought resistant cultivars further adds to the problem. It is therefore, necessary to appraise and screen genetic resources resistant to drought. Although, conventional breeding and marker assisted selection are being used to develop varieties more tolerant to water stress, these methods are time and resource consuming and germplasm dependent. Genetic engineering is attractive because of its potential to improve abiotic stress tolerance more rapidly. There is no optimum strategy for developing wheat cultivars better adapted to drought conditions. However, the challenge is to combine these different strategies most effectively to produce well adapted wheat germplasm. However, just as drought tolerance involves an extremely complex set of interactions among many characters, future improvements in wheat productivity in drought-stressed environments will require the integration of the skills of the scientists from many disciplines.