Executive Summary : | The Climate crisis is affecting the agricultural crop productivity and nutritional status of the edible part of staple food crops. It is the need of a time to develop climate-resilient biofortified high-yield crops such as wheat to address the future's food and nutritional security in prevue of global climate change and environmental crises. As per to the WHO, more than 2 billion people across the globe are suffering from a dietary deficiency of mineral micronutrients such as iron and zinc. This low dietary consumption of mineral micronutrients may lead to a condition known as "Hidden Hunger". It is further a matter of concern that many of the Indian population is suffering from mineral micronutrient deficiency which leads to stunted growth, mental retardation, poor immune systems, and overall severe health consequences. Wheat and rice are the staple food crops of most Indian populations. It is further speculated that the changing climate, such as elevated CO₂ levels, high temperature, drought, and salinity, may not only harm crop yield but also leads to lower mineral micronutrient content in seeds which may not only negatively impact the food security of the country but also the nutritional security. In the proposed project, several related wild progenitor species of wheat and rice will be evaluated for mineral micronutrient content, and various abiotic stresses linked with climate change, such as CO₂ content, salt, variable temperature, and pH, will be analysed. PI (Dr Shailender Kumar Verma) developed high mineral micronutrient-rich wheat-Aegilops interspecific hybrids using various molecular breeding approaches. It is a well-known fact that wild non-progenitor Aegilops species have superior genetic systems for tolerance against various abiotic and biotic stresses. These interspecific hybrids have not been investigated for their climate resilience potential. The high mineral micronutrient-rich wheat varieties will be evaluated for their climate resilience potential. These varieties will be further screened and characterised using various bioanalytical techniques and analysed using high throughput bioinformatics tools. In this proposed project, mineral micronutrients such as iron and zinc of wheat and various related wheat species, mainly Aegilops species, will be analysed. Global climate change is causing multiple types of abiotic stress, such as variable CO₂ levels, temperature, pH, drought, salinity, and soil calcium levels which affect wheat and other crops. The effect of these abiotic stresses will be analysed on wheat plants by using different agronomical, biochemical, genetics and bioinformatics methods. |