Molecular breeding for development of salt tolerance in brassica

Abstract

Mustard is one of the major oil yielding crops of India and their improvement for salt tolerance is one of the major goals for increasing the area in salt affected soil. There are several approaches like traditional breeding, molecular breeding and transgenics has been implemented for improvement of salt tolerance in brassica. Of these approaches molecular breeding is of the marvelous approach to incorporate the salinity tolerant trait in brassica cultivars. Several salt tolerance genes like BrERF4, DREB1A, SOS1, AtHKT1, BrECS, BnLEA4-1has been identified from the brassica species and Arabidopsis for various level of salinity tolerance and their introgression through marker assisted back cross breeding may increase the tolerance level. The salt tolerance brassica cultivars has been developed at several level of tolerance like germination, vegetative as well as seed yield stage.