Genetics of abiotic stresses: lessons from barley

Dr. Yasser Moursi.

**Associate Professor, Botany Department, Faculty of Science, Fayoum University, Egypt.

ysm01@fayoum.edu.eg

Abstract

The abiotic stresses are very serious factors that limit not only the plant's growth but also their production. In the context of production, barley is ranked fourth after wheat, maize and rice. Barley is the most abiotic stress tolerant among cereals. The genetics of different abiotic stresses, at different growth stages on different plant materials are unclear up to now. The objectives of our work were to evaluate different collections of barley under different abiotic stresses including drought, salinity, heat, and non-physiological concentrations of nanoparticles at different growth stages such as seed germination, seedling establishment and maturity, to identify the causative genes that orchestrate these interactions, and to identify the elite genotypes that can donate the alleles/genes of abiotic stress-tolerance-genes. We found that the causative genes that control different abiotic stresses reside on different chromosomes. For example, for drought and salinity tolerance at seed germination, the most effective candidate genes reside on chromosome 2H and 5H, respectively. Additionally, we had nearly detected the same QTLs number in different collections (Global collection vs Egyptian collection). In both collections, some promising genotypes revealed high tolerance under different stresses at different growth stages. 

Conclusively, the genetic control for abiotic stresses is stage-dependent as well as stress-dependent, to produce elite genotypes the alleles/genes should by piled up via crossing or gene transfer tools.

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Keywords: Genetics, Abiotic stress, Barley, Genes, GWAS .