ICARDA Books and Book Chapters

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10568/51680

Browse

Now showing 1 - 17 of 17

Faba Bean (Vicia faba L.)
(Book Chapter) Abou-Khater, Lynn; Balech, Rind; Maalouf, Fouad
Faba bean (Vicia faba L.) is an important cool season food legume, rich in protein and essential micronutrients. It plays a critical role in improving land structure and contributing to wild pollinator maintenance. It was domesticated in the Fertile Crescent of the Near East and spread to more than 60 countries with diverse agroecology around the world. Despite its nutritional value and adaptability, faba bean cultivation faces challenges, including biotic and abiotic stresses, reducing cultivation areas in various countries. Conservation efforts, notably by organizations like the ICARDA Gene Bank, have preserved diverse genetic resources, ensuring the genetic resilience of this valuable crop. These genetic repositories are invaluable for breeding programmes, enabling the development of high-yielding and stress-resistant varieties. Despite the historical limited funding provided to faba bean, the research on crop improvement and agronomy led to a substantial increase in its yield. Moreover, to achieve higher productivity in the farming field, modern tools were developed to ensure higher genetic gains and faster release of cultivars. These include speed breeding with four generations per year, and the discoveries of single nucleotide polymorphism markers which are key achievements towards the development of marker-assisted selection techniques.
Biofortification: Concept and Methodologies
(Book Chapter, 2024-11-07) Baum, Michael; Tiwari, Vandita; Meenu, Maninder; Khandare, Kiran; Sheoron, Bhawna; Kaur, Satveer; Yadav, Mona
In life, a well-balanced diet is of utmost importance. A well-balanced diet can provide essential nutrients for good human health, including a wide array of micronutrients. Most of the global population relies on staple crops like rice, wheat, maize, sorghum, millets, and root and tuber crops for nutrition. Due to an insufficient supply of proteins, vitamins, and minerals from the available food sources, one-half of the world’s population is suffering from malnutrition. Traditionally, nutrient shortages were addressed via supplementation and fortification. Contemporary times necessitate novel strategies to reach underserved rural communities, effectively managing the hurdles of micronutrient malnutrition. The alternative solution, namely, biofortification, is serving to meet nutritional needs. Biofortified crops have a higher content of targeted nutrients in the edible part of plants. This chapter explores the significance and fundamental principles of biofortification and highlights agronomic, plant breeding, and transgenic-based approaches used for this purpose. Moreover, we delve into the challenges linked with biofortification.
Strategies for Speed Breeding in Crops to Accelerate Plant Improvement
(Book Chapter, 2024-08-21) Naglaa A, Abdallah; Hamwieh, Aladdin; Radwan, Khaled; Baum, Michael
Plant breeding aims to create new varieties with enhanced yield and quality. Speed breeding has emerged as a particularly potent strategy, effectively reducing crop generation time and accelerating breeding programs for crop improvement. This innovative approach encompasses a set of advanced methods intended to expedite agricultural enhancement by promoting faster plant growth and development. It can take several years to create new crop varieties with desirable characteristics using traditional breeding techniques, which are frequently slow. However, with the use of speed breeding strategies, crops can be developed in a matter of months rather than years. An overview of the most popular speed breeding techniques, including tissue culture and doubled haploid, genetics, long-period light exposure techniques, and agriculture in controlled environments, is given in this chapter. These strategies can be used individually or in combination with new breeding technologies such as genome editing to achieve even faster results. Reports have highlighted the implementation of speed breeding techniques in crops like wheat, rice, barley, and maize. The substantial advantages of speed breeding in enhancing food security and building resilience against climate change are noteworthy. Nevertheless, it is important to acknowledge any potential risks or concerns associated with these techniques, including potential environmental impacts and the need for rigorous safety assessments. In general, incorporating speed breeding into crop enhancement initiatives can lead to faster development of new crop varieties with improved traits, ultimately helping to address global food security challenges.
Innovations in Agronomic Management for Adaptation to Climate Change in Legume Cultivation
(Book Chapter, 2023) Yucel, Derya; Yucel, Celal; Kamçi, Gizem; Hamwieh, Aladdin
Climate change has significant impacts on agriculture and has the potential to further impact it through changing rainfall patterns, drought, floods, increases in average high temperature, and other climatic factors. The negative effects of these changes are expected to be more common than positive effects. Grain and forage legumes play an important role in agriculture by providing protein-rich food and feed. In parallel with the rapidly increasing world population, the need for food is also increasing. However, the limited possibilities of expanding the farm lands bring serious problems to agricultural production today. Until now, the only way to increase agricultural production was to obtain more products per unit area. However, the studies and methods applied in this direction bring some drawbacks. The biggest success in agriculture in the future is to achieve the desired increase in production by reducing the effect of climate change. This can only be possible with sustainable agricultural methods that will be directly helpful in promoting an appropriate production system. Developing resistant/tolerant legume crop cultivars suitable for abiotic stress conditions and wide adaptation as well as development of suitable agronomic approaches must be implemented globally. These approaches will improve the production of sufficient and quality foodstuffs, which are needed by the rapidly growing world population, at affordable costs, and the protection of the environment and natural agricultural resources.
Genetic Engineering: A Powerful Tool for Crop Improvement
(Book Chapter, 2024-01-24) Bhattacharjee, Mamta; Meshram, Swapnil; Dayma, Jyotsna; Pandey, Neha; Naglaa A, Abdallah; Hamwieh, Aladdin; Mahmoud, Nourhan Fouad; Acharjee, Sumita
Rising population, changing climatic conditions, and various biotic and abiotic stresses are contributors to lowering crop yields. This, in turn, has augmented the number of people suffering from malnutrition. The applications of genetic engineering including genome editing are important as it can complement modern breeding activities to mitigate the effects of changing environment and boost crop production. The genetically modified (GM) crops thus offer one or more advantageous attributes, such as herbicide resistance, tolerance against pests and pathogens, and nutritional enhancement. The discovery of the natural ability of Agrobacterium tumefaciens to transfer a segment of its DNA (T-DNA) into the host was one of the breakthroughs of the twentieth century. It marked the beginning of achieving successful genetic transformation in a wide range of plants. Further, with the advent of technologies like zinc-finger nucleases (ZFNs), transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs), and clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/Cas, it has been possible to overcome the limitations of conventional breeding techniques. The synergism of scientific skills with sophisticated technologies resulted in many successful GM crops that were resistant to insects, pests, and weeds and enriched in micronutrients like vitamins and various minerals. Although not all GM crops have been commercialized, a few like soybean, papaya, maize, cotton, common bean, sweet potato, cowpea, etc. are practising. Recently, genome-edited crops are also approved for commercialization. The technology holds immense promise to achieve UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs) to fight hunger, attain food security, enhance nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture.
CRISPR genome editing to address food security and climate changes
(Book Chapter, 2023-09-26) Abdallah, Naglaa A.; Hamwieh, Aladdin; Radwan, Khaled; Mahmoud, Nourhan Fouad; Baum, Michael
Climate change causes an increase in the intensity of adverse abiotic and biotic stresses that could severely threaten agriculture production and food security including production, access, and prices. The world's population is anticipated to reach 9.8 billion by 2050, while food production would decline by 20%. The risk of continuous change in the environment has attracted the attention of plant scientists, who are using all available technologies to enhance crop quality and yield. Omics approaches are crucial for studying stress tolerance mechanisms and exploring candidate genes. Several efforts have been made to face these emerging challenges using traditional breeding, genetically modified organisms, and genome editing. Over the last decade, the integration of CRISPR/Cas genome editing into modern breeding programs has had a great impact on crop improvement by targeting precise changes to genomes. Genome editing is a good candidate for developing beneficial climate-resilient crops targeting biotechnological tools. Recently, new techniques in genome editing have been developed, including epigenome modifiers, and base and prime editing which are promising developments for improving plant performance and crop productivity. This chapter unravels the whole picture of the application of genome editing to address climate change and improve crops.
Novel Genome-Editing Approaches for Developing Non-GM Crops for Sustainable Improvement and the Mitigation of Climate Changes
(Book Chapter, 2024-03-22) Abdallah, Naglaa A.; Hamwieh, Aladdin; Baum, Michael
The utilization of clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR)/Cas-based genome-editing technologies holds significant promise in the realm of crop genome manipulation since it enables precise modifications and expedites the progress of crop breeding initiatives. Crop improvements need to be genetically stable and transgene-free to ensure sustainability, mitigate environmental stresses, and gain consumer and decision-maker acceptance. Edited plants with transgenic-based approaches can address many problems associated with transgenic plants. CRISPR/Cas genome editing allows the development of precise modification at the nucleotide level that is not different from that which occurred from natural recombination during conventional breeding. Various methods have accomplished genome editing without the incorporation of transgenes. These strategies involve the utilization of site-directed nucleases, specifically type 1 (SDN-1), as well as cisgenic editing employing SDN-2. A number of countries, including the United States, Japan, India, and Australia, classify genome-edited crops that lack transgenes or foreign deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) as non-genetically modified (non-GM) and thereby exclude them from regulations governing genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Agrobacterium-mediated or biolistic transformations are often employed methods for introducing the CRISPR components into the plant genome. The first generation plants could be used to obtain transgenic-free plants through the segregation of heterozygous crops. However, the transformation process is expensive and time-consuming, and many species are recalcitrant to transformation. In addition, it will be impossible to get transgenic-free plants from plants that are propagated vegetatively. The target delivery of Cas-gRNA nucleoprotein using chemical or physical methods could be a promising tool for developing transgene-free edited plants. Also, viral vectors were used for the delivery of CRISPR/Cas components to obtain transgene-free edited plants. In a recent study, the technique of grafting was employed to introduce transgenic roots harboring tRNA-like sequences (TLS) that serve as molecular signals facilitating the transport of ribonucleic acids (RNAs) over long distances within plants. This approach was utilized to distribute the CRISPR/Cas components to both the shoots and seeds of the plants. This chapter presents a thorough examination of the many techniques employed in the acquisition of transgene-free plant genome editing, as well as the advancements made in comparison to other genetically modified (GM) plants and edited organisms.
Multilocation Evaluation of Alternative Forage Crops Grown Under Salinity Conditions in the South of Morocco
(Book Chapter, 2023) El Mouttaqi, Ayoub; Mnaouer, Ihssane; Belcaid, Mohamed; Ibourki, Mohamed; Diatta, Lamine; Devkota, Krishna; Nilahyane, Abdelaziz; Hirich, Abdelaziz
Salinity is a major problem affecting agricultural activity in many regions across the world. Therefore, practices such as biosaline agriculture and crop diversification by introducing alternative crops are key solutions to overcome this problem and enhance the productivity of salt-affected lands. This study aimed to evaluate the performance of several alternative forage crops, including cereals, pseudo-cereals, grasses, legumes, and fodder beet cultivated under saline conditions in five experimental sites in the south of Morocco. The obtained results indicated that not all crops performed very well on all sites. Crops with low tolerance to salinity, such as the cereals group, showed a significant reduction in dry biomass and yield due to increased salinity. In comparison, salt-tolerant crops such as blue panicum, sesbania, and fodder beet showed higher productivity under moderate and high salinity levels in comparison with low salinity. The findings of this study clearly indicated that the good adaptation and performance of most tested alternative crops under salinity conditions, especially the perennial crops such as blue panicum and sesbania are favored by farmers due to their low requirement in terms of agricultural inputs.
Chapter 6 - Barley
(Book Chapter, 2023-09-22) Kumari, Safaa; Makkouk, Khaled; Najar, Asma
Among 30 viruses have been reported on barley, but only few of them are widespread and cause significant economic damage. Among the most important viruses reported to infect barley are BUDVs (such as BYDV-PAV, BYDV-MAV), cereal yellow dwarf virus (CYPV)-RPV, barely yellow striate mosaic virus (BYSMV), and barley stripe mosaic virus (BSMV).
Harnessing Genetic Variation in Physiological and Molecular Traits to Improve Heat Tolerance in Food Legumes
(Book Chapter, 2023) Devi, Poonam; Chaudhary, Shikha; Bhardwaj, Anjali; Priya, Manu; Jha, Uday; Pratap, Aditya; Agrawal, Shiv Kumar; Bindumadahva, HanumanthaRao; Singh, Inderjit; Singh, Sarvjeet; Vara Prasad, V. P.; Siddique, Kadambot H M; Nayyar, Harsh
Plant genetic variations provide opportunity to develop new and improved cultivars with desired characteristics, hence gaining major attention from the scientists and breeders all over the world. Harnessing genetic variability is the key factor in the adaptation of plants to ever-rising temperature. Nowadays, such characteristic traits among the population can be used to develop various heat-resilient crop varieties and have a profound effect on restoring the balance between climate change and agriculture. Genetic variations in physiological and molecular traits proved to be the major components for breeding programs to augment the gene pool. With genetic variations, it is possible to identify the phenotypic variations governed either by a single gene or by many genes that will be helpful for mapping associated quantitative trait loci. Genetic variations can also be traced by examining various physiological traits of a crop plant like growth traits (biomass, plant height, and root growth), leaf traits (stomatal conductance, chlorophyll content, chlorophyll fluorescence, photosynthetic rate, membrane stability, sucrose content, and canopy temperature depression), and floral traits (mainly associated with male gametophyte). Yield traits can also display enormous variation, making it highly useful/reliable for screening purposes. Further, genetic variation at the biochemical level can be assessed by measuring the expression of enzymes (related to oxidative stress and antioxidants) and metabolites (both primary and secondary). Evaluating how genetic variation influences phenotype is the ultimate objective of genetics, and using omics approaches can improve the understanding of heat tolerance-governing mechanisms. Further, collecting molecular data at different levels of plant growth and development will help to accelerate our understanding of the mechanisms linking genotype to phenotype.
Genomic Approaches to Using Diversity for the Adaptation of Modern Varieties of Wheat and Barley to Climate Change
(Book Chapter, 2023-02-01) Neumann, Kerstin; Schulthess, Albert W; Bassi, Filippo; Dhanagond, Sidram; Khlestkina, Elena; Börner, Andreas; Graner, Andreas; Kilian, Benjamin
Plant genetic resources have contributed to the identification and characterization of key loci and genes for important agronomic traits such as flowering time, plant height, root and shoot growth and resistance to abiotic stresses. Key loci for pre-anthesis growth vigor and drought tolerance have been revealed by genome-wide mapping in three diverse barley panels. Recent studies have identified candidate loci for biomass and/or the corresponding growth rates, water use efficiency, root traits, tiller number, plant height under drought or/and well-watered conditions using destructive and non-invasive 48phenotyping. In all three panels, 76 genomic regions were identified in at least two panels in which QTLs for growth and/or drought tolerance cluster, some marker-trait associations were even found for identical SNPs in all panels. The main genomic regions identified in three different mapping panels for trait complexes such as growth vigor, root architecture and pre-anthesis drought tolerance are highly relevant for future research on adaptation to climate change.
Water quality in agriculture: risks and risk mitigation
(Book, 2023-09-08) Drechsel, Pay; Marjani Zadeh, S.; Salcedo, F. P.
This publication, Water Quality in Agriculture: Risks and Risk Mitigation, emphasizes technical solutions and good agricultural practices, including risk mitigation measures suitable for the contexts of differently resourced institutions working in rural as well as urban and peri-urban settings in low- and middle-income countries. With a focus on sustainability of the overall land use system, the guidelines also cover possible downstream impacts of farm-level decisions. As each country has a range of site-specific conditions related to climate, soil and water quality, crop type and variety, as well as management options, subnational adjustments to the presented guidelines are recommended. Water Quality in Agriculture: Risks and Risk Mitigation, is intended for use by national and subnational governmental authorities, farm and project managers, extension officers, consultants and engineers to evaluate water quality data, and identify potential problems and solutions related to water quality. The presented guidelines will also be of value to the scientific research community and university students.
Insect Resistance
(Book Chapter) Tadesse, Wuletaw; Harris, Marion O.; Crespo-Herrera, Leonardo; A. Mori, Boyd; Kehel, Zakaria; El Bouhssini, Mustapha
Studies to-date have shown the availability of enough genetic diversity in the wheat genetic resources (land races, wild relatives, cultivars, etc.) for resistance to the most economically important insect pests such as Hessian fly, Russian wheat aphid, greenbug, and Sun pest. Many R genes – including 37 genes for Hessian fly, 11 genes for Russian wheat aphid and 15 genes for greenbug – have been identified from these genetic resources. Some of these genes have been deployed singly or in combination with other genes in the breeding programs to develop high yielding varieties with resistance to insects. Deployment of resistant varieties with other integrated management measures plays key role for the control of wheat insect pests.
Potential of Crop Simulation Models to Increase Food and Nutrition Security Under a Changing Climate in Nepal
(Book Chapter, 2022) Devkota, Krishna; Timsina, Jagadish; Amgain, Lal P; Devkota Wasti, Mina
With current trends of increasing population, decreasing arable land, and a low yearly increment rate of cereal productivity, Nepal has an annual deficit of >1.3 million tons of edible rice, wheat, and maize. This indicates the urgent need for demand-led agricultural interventions for improving cereals productivity for food security. Crop simulation models and DSS tools have potential to predict potential yields, identify yield gaps, and help make decisions for improved crop, nutrient, water and pest management. Models can assess the impact of climate change, and help develop adaptation and mitigation measures to lesses the impact of climate change. To date, no review work has been conducted on the potential applications of crop simulation models and their relevance in Nepal. The objective of this chapter is to review and synthesize the relevant studies on the development and application of crop simulation models for major cereal crops: rice, wheat, and maize. We reviewed around 95 published papers and reports from South Asia and Nepal available in Scopus, SpringerLink, and ScienceDirect using the Google search engine. Analysis revealed that yield gaps (potential minus farmers' field yields) of 4.9–9.0, 3.1–6.9, and 4.5–12.5 t ha−1 exist in rice, wheat, and maize crops, respectively. For achieving self-sufficiency in cereal grains, the average national productivity of rice, wheat, and maize needs to be increased to 5.7, 3.9, and 4.9 t ha−1, respectively by 2030. Based on the review, climate change has both positive and negative consequences on cereal production across all agro-ecological zones. Crop simulation models have been applied for enhancing crop productivity and exploring adaptation strategies for climate change resilience. Models can generate various recommendations related to biophysical factors: crop, water, tillage, nutrient, and pest management, crop yield, and weather forecasting. Furthermore, models have shown the potential to determine the effects of climate change on crop productivity across a range of environments in Nepal. In conclusion, crop simulation models could be useful decision support tools for policy planning and implementation, increasing efficiency in research, prioritizing research and extension interventions for increasing crop yields, and the way forward to achieve food and nutritional security and some of the Sustainable Development Goals (particularly #1, #2 and #13).
Conservation Agriculture in South Asia
(Book Chapter, 2022-02-08) Saharawat, Yashpal Singh; Gill, Mushtaq; Gathala, Mahesh Kumar; Karki, Tika Bahadur; Wijeratne, D.B.T.; Samiullah, Sayed
South Asia, a home of 1.7 billion people houses the most poor and malnourished people globally. The region need to double its food production by 2050. Current scenario puts South Asian agriculture in a dilema facing triple challenges: to increase production to meet the food demand of growing human population with a lower environmental footprint, preserve natural resources and mitigate or adapt to the changing climatic scenarios. Conservation Agriculture offers a number of benefits such as arresting and reversing the resource degradation, decreasing cultivation costs, making agriculture more resource – use-efficient, competitive and sustainable whilst increasing resilience to climatic variability and improving livelihood incomes in South Asia. The CA approach for managing agro-ecosystems is of paramount significance in improving soil health, sustained productivity and maintaining natural biodiversity. However, there is still a large knowledge gap in understanding of nutrient and water management in CA systems.
Toward structural change: Gender transformative approaches
(Book Chapter, 2021-11) McDougall, Cynthia; Badstue, Lone B.; Mulema, Annet A.; Fischer, Gundula; Najjar, Dina; Pyburn, Rhiannon; Elias, Marlène; Joshi, Deepa; Vos, Andrea
Almost a quarter of a century after the Beijing Declaration, and with 10 years left to meet the Sustainable Development Goals, The Guardian announced the SDG Gender Index’s finding that, “Not one single country is set to achieve gender equality by 2030” (Equal Measures 2030 2019, Ford 2019). This aligns with the most recent Global Gender Gap Index, which signals that, on the current trajectory, it will take approximately 170 years to achieve gender equality (WEF 2016)—a wait of seven generations, or two and a half lifetimes for the average woman.
Moving beyond reaching women in seed systems development
(Book Chapter, 2021-11) Puskur, Ranjitha; Mudege, Netsayi N.; Njuguna-Mungai, Esther; Nchanji, Eileen Bogweh; Vernooy, Ronnie; Galiè, Alessandra; Najjar, Dina
Seed is critical to food security as the first link in the food value chain (Galiè 2013) and can be a powerful agent of change (Reddy et al. 2007). Similarly, women’s empowerment and gender equality are key to food and nutrition security (Agarwal 2018). The interplay between the two is becoming increasingly important: socioeconomic and gender differences in seed and food security must be understood to target seed interventions effectively (FANRPAN 2011). However, the importance of seed systems to empower women has so far been neglected. This chapter contributes toward closing this gap. Gender analysis is important for a comprehensive understanding of seed systems and to shape effective and inclusive interventions that go beyond reaching women to benefit and empower them.

Browse

Recent Submissions