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Journal of Experimental Botany 2009 60(10):2805-2815; doi:10.1093/jxb/erp211
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© The Author [2009]. Published by Oxford University Press [on behalf of the Society for Experimental Biology]. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

This article appears in the following Journal of Experimental Botany issue: Special Issue: Crop Science for a Changing Climate and Plant Biomass for Food and Energy [View the issue table of contents]

REVIEW-ARTICLE

Genomic approaches for designing durum wheat ready for climate change with a focus on drought

D. Z. Habash1,*, Z. Kehel2 and M. Nachit2

1Plant Science Department, Centre for Crop Genetic Improvement, Rothamsted Research, Harpenden, Hertfordshire AL5 2JQ, UK
2Biodiversity and Integrated Gene Management, International Centre for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), PO Box 5466, Aleppo, Syria

* To whom correspondence should be addressed: E-mail: dimah.habash{at}bbsrc.ac.uk

Climate change is projected to have a significant impact on temperature and precipitation profiles in the Mediterranean basin. The incidence and severity of drought will become commonplace and this will reduce the productivity of rain-fed crops such as durum wheat. Genetic diversity is the material basis for crop improvement and plant breeding has exploited naturally occurring variation to deliver cultivars with improved resistance to abiotic stresses. The coupling of new genomic tools, technologies, and resources with genetic approaches is essential to underpin wheat breeding through marker-assisted selection and hence mitigate climate change. Improvements in crop performance under abiotic stresses have primarily targeted yield-related traits and it is anticipated that the application of genomic technologies will introduce new target traits for consideration in wheat breeding for resistance to drought. Many traits relating to the plant's response and adaptation to drought are complex and multigenic, and quantitative genetics coupled with genomic technologies have the potential to dissect complex genetic traits and to identify regulatory loci, genes and networks. Full realization of our abilities to manipulate metabolism, transduction pathways, and transcription factors for crop improvement ultimately relies on our basic understanding of the regulation of plant networks at all levels of function.

Key words: Breeding, climate change, durum wheat, genetics, genomics, systems biology

Received 29 May 2009; Accepted 3 June 2009


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