Genetic Resources for Some Wheat Abiotic Stress Tolerances

Breeding for abiotic stress tolerances has a similar input necessity given to the incorporation of genetic diversity that combats biotic stress constraints. The major difference is that abiotic stress tolerance genetic transfers are expected to be more durable since in the absence of pathogenic infl uences the traits are considered static entities. Wheat production scenarios have generated the need to breed cultivars with tolerance to drought, salinity, heat, waterlogging, plus cold, aluminum, some micronutrients, boron and copper efficiency to a lesser degree. Sources of allelic diversity exploited exist in the conventional wheat germplasm, landrace cultivars or in its relative species distributed across the Triticeae gene pools. Harnessing the above diversity has protocol specifi city that opens doors for wheat improvement programs across various phases as infl uenced by genetic introgression simplicity or complexity mediated by novel breeding techniques, achievement of homozygosity and use of molecular tools.