Breeding for Stress Resilience in Corn Under Indian Scenario.

By 2050, the world’s population is expected to increase by 35% and to sustain this growth major crop production levels should have to outpace it at all fronts. Demand for corn in Asia and climate change effects are, however surpassing most of the projections in Indian corn mega environments. As such, by 2050, corn yield is projected to be reduced by 17 % due to climate change induced high temperature and drought conditions. Climatic patterns over last decade reveals that there is no significant change in total rainfall, but reduction in rainy days and increased rainfall intensity are projected to increase in the future and these changes will further threaten corn production both in rain-fed and irrigated cropping systems. To augment this challenge, improvements are needed in several fronts; developing stress resilient cultivars and use of efficient resource management strategies. Constitution of base germplasm, elite productive line and applying relevant selection criterion using high throughput phenotyping is very important followed by integrating molecular tools for target products to hasten trait pyramiding into elite corn cultivars. Genomics appears to be a promising tool for deciphering the stress responsiveness of crop species with adaptation traits or in wild relatives toward identifying underlying genes, alleles or quantitative trait loci. Reorienting our breeding priorities for achieving maximized yields under stress environments is the only available approach for long term gains.