The Impact and Future Prospects of Mutation Breeding in Indian Agriculture
Abstract
The scientific breeding method that creates mutations, mutation breeding, revolutionizes agriculture by cultivating a higher yield of the crop and making them more resilient. Challenges such as mutation unpredictability and ethical aspects exist. Nevertheless, mutation breeding should be considered as a sustainable practice of agriculture that ensures climate adaptation and food security. Coordinating technological developments, suiting it with other methods of breeding and dealing with socio-economic challenges are essential in this regard for the future of gene editing in the different agro-climatic regions of India.
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Introduction
Mutagenesis or mutational breeding, which is a scientific method, has tremendously changed many aspects of agriculture. The technique involves the deliberate induction of mutations in the genetic information of an organism, thus creating a wide array of variants that can be selectively utilized to improve crops. The functions of mutation breeding in agronomy are multifaceted but significant which had lead to the increasing crop productivity. The world'spopulation is getting bigger and thus the demand for food is growing as well. To meet the higher consumer demand, it is thus essential to enhance crop varieties that yield more, irrespective of the favourable conditions. Mutation breeding has been able, therefore, to overcome this problem, and has played a key part, along with other methods, in the development of high-yielding crop varieties (Ahloowalia et al., 2004). Particularly, mutation breeding is one of the indispensable means to increase the nutritional value of crops. It has been possible to achieve enhanced nutritional qualities in crop varieties through the use of induced mutation. Likewise, a variety of rice with higher protein content as well as maize with increased essential amino acid level has been developed. This aspect is especially true in areas where malnutrition is the norm that the improved varieties of crops can also bring about better health outcomes. (Shu et al., 2012). The other important issue of mutation breeding is that it can be used to create cultivars resistant to pests and diseases. It not only limits the dependency on the synthetic pesticides, hence lowering the risk on the environment and agriculture, but also helps in the sustainability of crop production. Breeding pest and disease resistant crop varieties can virtually eliminate or dramatically reduce crop losses, thus maintaining food security and supply (Jankowicz-Cieslak et al.,2017).The emergence of mutation breeding as the crucial means for generating climate resilient crops is a response to the threats of climate change. It is used, in the development of varieties, which are tolerant to different types of abiotic stresses for instance, drought, salinity and extreme temperatures. Hence, this is particularly important for regions like India, where agriculture is a key economic sector but remains sensitive to climate change impacts. The development of climate-resistant crop varieties will make sure that farming remains sustainable in the face of so many challenges (Parry & Hawkesford, 2010). On the other hand, it needs to be pointed out that mutation breeding also comes with several difficulties. Altering the genetic material by means of inducing mutations is random and unpredictable, and not all induced mutation results in beneficial traits. On the other hand, there also exists a set of ethical issues related to the alteration of hereditary material. Hence, a detailed research must be conducted to observe ethical standards whenever this technique is use,mutation breeding potently resonates on the scene of contemporary agriculture. It provides a multi-purpose tool to combat these problems such as food security, malnutrition and climate change. Nevertheless, this technology needs to be approached with caution owing to its problems that it poses.
