Development of transgenic cotton for combating biotic and abiotic stresses

Official URL: https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1472-2_26

Cotton is an important crop as it produces valuable textile fibre and contributes to economy of various textile producing countries. However, cotton production is under great threat due to persistent climate change as more frequent drought spells, soil salinization and heat stress, plant pathogens and insect pests significantly reduce its growth, development, fibre and seed yield. Cotton yield has shown up to 50-60%yield losses due to drought and biotic stresses. However, crop improvement through classical breeding takes almost 7-8 years making classical breeding a tedious, laborious, timeconsuming and expensive process. On the other hand, DNA recombinant technology ensures the transfer and integration of target gene into cotton genome within a cropping season, thus shortening the breeding cycle significantly. Therefore, transgenic cotton with improved drought, heat and salinity tolerance and resistance against herbicides, diseases and insects has been developed extensively in relatively shorter time. Transgenicmethod has also helped in improvement of the traitswhich are considered difficult or impossible to be improved through classical breeding. Another success of transgenic cotton is its great acceptance to farming community due to economic benefits resulting from biotic and abiotic stress tolerance and reduced costs of insect pest sprays. Furthermore, transgenic cotton is under cultivation in various regions and countries; thus we have reviewed the progress in development for biotic and abiotic stress tolerance in cotton through transgenic method. This information will be a valuable resource for cotton breeders and biotechnologists for planning of their future research.