Opportunities for increasing water productivity of CGIAR crops through plant breeding and molecular biology.

Abstract

This paper focuses on the opportunities for increasing crop water productivity through breeding. The first section takes a general look at water use by plants and by farmers and the implications of these uses for water productivity at the crop level. The second section discusses the opportunities for increasing water productivity by focusing on four types of trait (minimize non-transpirational uses of water in agriculture, reduce transpiration without reducing production, increase production without increasing transpiration, and use of cheaper water and less water management). The third section focuses of breeding for drought tolerance and the prospects for improving breeding efficiency through genomics.