Prospects of improving flooding tolerance in lowland rice varieties by conventional breeding and genetic engineering

Abstract

Flooding is a recurrent phenomenon in several lowland rice-growing areas in India and elsewhere. Even though rice is a reasonably flooding-tolerant crop, the annual loss incurred by farmers due to floods is large. There are excellent traditional rice types with high level flooding tolerance. Combining high level flooding tolerance to high grain yield through conventional breeding has been successful to a limited extent so far but there are enormous opportunities for the same. There are also hopes that flooding tolerance can be genetically engineered in rice using a transgenic approach. We take a look on the prospects for improvement of rice to flooding stress through conventional breeding and through plant genetic engineering.