CLIMATE READY CROPS FOR DROUGHT STRESS: A REVIEW IN NEPALESE CONTEXT

Abstract

The global population is increasing at an alarming rate. Meeting food and nutritional demand of this increased population has become a major issue for agronomist and agricultural researchers. On the top of that, overall agricultural productions are constrained by global climate change resulting several biotic and abiotic stress. Among the abiotic stress, drought has become a problematic issues in arid and semi-arid regions of the world leading towards the dire future, questioning on food sufficiency and affordability for future world. Though several adaptation and mitigation strategies are practiced at local and global level, these seems redundant with increased demand of foods crops. To address the problem of climate change on drought in a sustainable way, climate ready crops are been developed through selection, breeding and genetic engineering techniques. These crops are tailored for drought prone areas pooling all the traits that are responsible for tolerating the water stress condition. This review article discuss some of the released climate ready crops, their xerophytic traits and mechanism of gene expression of such crops. Climate ready crops seems to surpass the effect of climate change on drought stress through sustained productivity that could meet the need of future generation. Development and management of these crops could help to maintain the stability on food production that could become a real boon for agriculture which is hindered by climate change.