Indian Journal of Plant and Soil

Rice is the primary food for more than half of the world’s population, especially in developing countries of Asia, where water scarcity/drought is becoming an imminent threat for sustaining rice productivity. Rice uses two to five times more water than other cereals especially wheat or maize and consumes about 30 per cent of the freshwater used for agricultural crops worldwide. Drought is the most serious environmental stress which is estimated to affect 50 percent of the world’s rice production to a greater or lesser extent. Introgression of drought tolerance to the cultivated varieties is a way to overcome the scarcity of water. But the time and breeding cycle needs to be reduced to use this effectively. To overcome the time scarcity, minimize the limitation of conventional breeding and recover the parental genome within 2–3 generations, the usage of marker assisted backcrossing technique is most effective way. Here in this study Marker assisted backcross breeding (MABB) technique is used to identify the lines with highest recurrent parent genome (RPG) recovery. IR64 is an adopted variety with drought susceptibility which was crossed with Apo an upland rice. Sixty seven BC2F3 populations were screened for foreground selection for three drought QTLs namely qDTY2.2, qDTY3.1 and qDTY8.1. Four lines which were homozygous for the different QTL combination were identified. A total of 596 SSR markers were tested to identify the polymorphism between the parents and 98 of them found to be polymorphic. Background analysis revealed in the BC2F2 generation the average RPG recovery was above 80 % and that for the selected plant was 85%. This study revealed the usefulness of marker assisted backcrossing for the quick recovery of a parental genome in a backcrossing population.

Keywords: Marker assisted backcrossing; Recurrent parent genome; Rice; Drought.

The rising population and reduction in the amount of land and some other resources have created tremendous pressure on current agricultural producers to meet the increasing food demands. To cope with this challenge, certain key inputs, such as fertilizers and other chemicals, are overused, which are worsening the surroundings. This intensive agricultural production without adherence to ecological sustainability has led to declining soil health, land degradation, and severe environmental problems. So, future efforts to feed the growing population should aim for greater agricultural production within sustainable environments. The present review suggests that a sustainable production system can be developed by combining the multifaceted efforts under soil and crop management strategies (SCMS) practices with short and long term preventive measures.

Keywords: Ecosystem; Nutrient cycling; Organic matter; Soil fertility; Micronutrients.

In this era of rapid urbanization and increasing population traditional-farming activities are facing various unforeseen hurdles. Due to some major drawbacks, traditional farming activities are unable to meet global food demand, necessitating the use of advanced technology to achieve food security. In this aspect, nanoparticles mediated advanced technology is an alternative tool to boost up crop production in a feasible way. Nanotechnology has a pronounced perspective to boost the status of precision farming techniques by increasing the plant-nutrient absorption level, disease detection capability, pest and pathogen control, food storage and packing, etc. Nanotechnology offers varied types of new tools for agriculture like nano-fertilizer, nano-herbicides, nano-pesticides formulations, nano-based antimicrobial solutions, and nano-sensors. Nanoparticles are considered a good carrier platform for various nanobased agrochemical formulations. It can enrich the efficacy of the site-directed delivery of nano encapsulated active ingredients. Moreover, nanoencapsulation also provides the slow and sustained release of active ingredients. In this review content, we attempt to describe the modern advancement of nanotechnologies and their application in farming to meet the increasing food demand in an eco-friendly manner.

Keywords: Traditional farming activities; Nanoparticles; Nano-fertilizer; Nanoencapsulation.