Boya Venkatesh, Amaranatha
Abstract
Groundnut, the third largest producing oilseed crop grown in arid and semiarid regions worldwide. The crop growth under the rainfed conditions often exposed to the abiotic stresses that severely affects crop production and yield. Introduction of stress resistance traits into crop plants may improve the tolerance capability and mitigates yield losses under stress conditions. The success of breeding approach for developing crop varieties for stress tolerance determined by the efforts of several research fields including plant physiology, molecular biology, and genetics. Also, the other major limitations for breeding programs are the species barriers and genomic incompatibilities. Hence, use of novel molecular biology tools for revealing the important mechanisms of stress tolerance and engineering the stress tolerant crops by the overexpression of stress-specific genes through transgenic approach remains a viable option. This review focuses on the groundnut transgenics developed against various abiotic stresses like drought, salt and oxidative stress by overexpression of candidate genes involved in the regulation of metabolic pathways, cellular components, and stress-responsive pathways. This review includes discussion on the significance of transgenic groundnut events and the importance of trait ability to enhance the abiotic stress tolerance. This review also emphasizes the new progress in the transgenic event developments in groundnut and the novelty of multigene transgenics in comparison with single gene transgenics for the enhanced abiotic stress tolerance.