Photosynthesis is the fundamental biological process underlying plant growth, crop productivity, and global food security. However, its efficiency is highly vulnerable to abiotic stresses, which disrupt chlorophyll biosynthesis, electron transport, carbon assimilation, stomatal regulation, and photoprotective mechanisms, ultimately reducing crop yield. Improving photosynthetic resilience under adverse environments has therefore become a major objective of modern crop improvement. Recent advances in phenomics and high-throughput phenotyping (HTP) have transformed the evaluation of photosynthesis-related traits by enabling rapid, non-destructive, and large-scale assessment across diverse environments, while facilitating quantitative characterization of structural, physiological, biochemical, and thermal responses to abiotic stress. Technologies including chlorophyll fluorescence, gas-exchange analysis, thermal imaging, hyperspectral imaging, LiDAR, and UAV-based sensing provide comprehensive insights into plant physiological responses and stress adaptation. Integration of these phenomic approaches with genomic information and artificial intelligence (AI)-driven analytical frameworks has strengthened genomic and phenomic prediction, enabling more accurate identification of candidate genes, selection of superior genotypes, and accelerated genetic gain. This review critically synthesizes recent advances in photosynthesis-related traits, phenomics, HTP technologies, and their integration with genomics and AI-assisted breeding, highlighting current challenges, knowledge gaps, and future opportunities for developing climate-resilient wheat and rice cultivars and promoting sustainable crop production.
A. Yadav, Anuradha Singh, Saurabh Pandey et al.· International Journal of Pla...· 0 citations
Abiotic stresses, such as drought, salinity, temperature extremes, heavy metals, and pesticide toxicity, severely impact plant growth and productivity, primarily through the accumulation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and metabolic imbalances. In the era of climate change and declining agricultural sustainability, the development of stress-resilient crops has become essential for ensuring global food and nutritional security. Millets, also known as ‘super grain’ or ‘miracle grain’ due to their nutritional value, are recognized for their inherent resilience and exhibit superior adaptability in arid and semi-arid ecosystems towards these abiotic stresses. It is due to their C4 photosynthetic efficiency, rapid life cycles, and deep root architecture. These cereals deploy integrated morphological, physiological, biochemical, and molecular mechanisms, including antioxidant defense systems, osmolyte accumulation, stress-responsive gene expression, and hormonal regulation to maintain homeostasis under stress. Despite these traits, millet improvement lags behind that of major cereals due to limited breeding efforts and underdeveloped molecular resources. This review focuses on recent advances in stress tolerance mechanisms, highlighting omics-driven insights, microbial and phytohormonal mitigation strategies, and exploring genome editing and modern breeding tools, such as CRISPR/Cas9 and genome-wide association studies (GWAS), for developing climate-resilient millet cultivars suitable for sustainable agriculture and future food security. The article explores the development of climate-resilient millet varieties by integrating molecular innovations into traditional agronomic practices, which will provide future benefits framework for developing new varieties. Overall, the article will deepen understanding of the molecular processes underlying stress responses and provide targeted solutions to enhance stress tolerance in millets.
Amandeep Singh, S. Kaushik, Manu Sharma et al.· Discover Plants· 0 citations