• Plant Biotechnology Reports
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.107-120
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• 2011

The ability to feed an expanding world population poses one of the greatest challenges to mankind in the future. Accompanying the increased demand for food by the expected nine billion inhabitants of Earth in 2050 will be a continual decrease in arable land area, together with a decline in crop yield due to a variety of stresses. For these formidable challenges to be met, future crops should not only by high-yielding, but also stress-tolerant and disease-resistant. In this review, we highlight the importance of genetic engineering as an indispensable tool to generate just such future crops. We briefly discuss strategies and available tools for biotechnological crop improvement and identify selected examples of candidate genes that may be manipulated so that current biological maxima in yield may be surpassed by comfortable margins. Future prospects and the necessity for basic research aimed at identifying novel target genes are also discussed.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.30 no.10
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• pp.1500-1509
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• 2020

Drought is a major abiotic factor and has drastically reduced crop yield globally, thus damaging the agricultural industry. Drought stress decreases crop productivity by negatively affecting crop morphological, physiological, and biochemical factors. The use of drought tolerant bacteria improves agricultural productivity by counteracting the negative effects of drought stress on crops. In this study, we isolated bacteria from the rhizosphere of broccoli field located in Daehaw-myeon, Republic of Korea. Sixty bacterial isolates were screened for their growth-promoting capacity, in vitro abscisic acid (ABA), and sugar production activities. Among these, bacterial isolates YNA59 was selected based on their plant growth-promoting bacteria traits, ABA, and sugar production activities. Isolate YNA59 highly tolerated oxidative stress, including hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) and produces superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT), and ascorbate peroxidase (APX) activities in the culture broth. YNA59 treatment on broccoli significantly enhanced plant growth attributes, chlorophyll content, and moisture content under drought stress conditions. Under drought stress, the endogenous levels of ABA, jasmonic acid (JA), and salicylic acid (SA) increased; however, inoculation of YNA59 markedly reduced ABA (877 ± 22 ng/g) and JA (169.36 ± 20.74 ng/g) content, while it enhanced SA levels (176.55 ± 9.58 ng/g). Antioxidant analysis showed that the bacterial isolate YNA59 inoculated into broccoli plants contained significantly higher levels of SOD, CAT, and APX, with a decrease in GPX levels. The bacterial isolate YNA59 was therefore identified as Variovorax sp. YNA59. Our current findings suggest that newly isolated drought tolerant rhizospheric Variovorax sp. YNA59 is a useful stress-evading rhizobacterium that improved drought-stress tolerance of broccoli and could be used as a bio-fertilizer under drought conditions.