Role of rootstocks to mitigate biotic and abiotic stresses in tropical and subtropical fruit crops: A review

Abstract

Fruit cultivation not only plays a crucial role in nutritional security but also offers employment opportunities, higher income and productivity to the farming community. Biotic and abiotic stresses are the most ominous factors in fruit production, which reduces the growth and productivity thereby resulting in an impact on global fruit production and availability. Biotic and abiotic stresses, including drought, extremes of temperature, various pest and diseases, salinity in soil and water are problems which are becoming acute. There is an urgent need to improve biotic and abiotic stress tolerance in fruit crops by using traditional breeding and biotechnology approaches like gene silencing and transgrafting. Nowadays, the virus resistance transgenic rootstocks are developed by using small interfering RNA s (silencing RNA) method. Rootstock breeding in fruit crops is a great challenge due to difficulty in identification of tolerant or resistance rootstock for various purposes. In this paper, we have discussed the various biotic and abiotic stresses, resistance mechanisms, and available resistant rootstocks so far as well as challenges in rootstock breeding which can be helpful to manage stress conditions in fruit cultivation. Further research is needed to develop the resistance rootstocks by using modern rootstock breeding methods with various biotechnological approaches.