Plant modification for more efficient water use: The challenge

✍ Scribed by Dale N. Moss; J.T. Woolley; J.F. Stone

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1974
• Weight: 617 KB
• Volume: 14
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0002-1571
• DOI: 10.1016/0002-1571(74)90026-0

✦ Synopsis

The information to guide plant breeders in developing higher yielding varieties by selecting for specific physiological traits which control the efficiency of water use is not available at the present time. Nevertheless, the promise is great that such an approach could result in significantly higher yielding varieties. Close cooperation will be required, however, between physiologists, physical scientists and plant breeders in defining yield limiting water-use traits, in discovering genetic variability for these traits and in incorporating desirable traits into new varieties. Without a cooperative team effort it is unlikely that the potential of breeding for physiological traits will be adequately tested on the results realized.

The effort expended in assembly of ideas in this symposium would be of little value if it did not result in at least pointing a way to approach the problem. In the discussion that follows we will presume that the goal of modifying plant water-use efficiency is to attain higher yields from a given amount of a limiting essential --water. Thus the limitations to which we will refer are yield limitations and traits of interest will be traits which play a determining role in yield through modifying the use of water. A breeder might be willing to begin work on several traits that appear to control wateruse efficiency such as the list drawn from the symposium and given in Table I, if he were shown evidence of the potential to make progress by doing so; however, no individual, team, or even several teams could hope to cope with * Minnesota Agricultural Experiment Station Journal Series No.8710.