CONCLUSIONS
With changing climate and global warming, drought and associated stress are going to be of prime importance in agriculture as developing drought resistant cultivars is central to achieving Zero Hunger, one of the 17 goals proposed in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (FAO, 2020). Root is the first organ that senses the changes in soil moisture and sends signal to adapt at morphological, anatomical, and molecular scales. These changes are accompanied with changes in root encompassing the first response from plant to counter water scarcity. Plant breeding focusing on modifying the RSA for drought avoidance mechanisms such as root specific suberin deposition, ABA, various phytohormones such as auxin, phenolics, along with crop management practices such as timely supply of micro and macro nutrients might result in drought resilient crops.
Hence, understanding of the RSA is necessary to produce high-yielding crops under water-limiting conditions, particularly in the dryland agricultural system, for ensuring global food security. This goal requires an overall understanding of plant response to drought and related stresses including the response from root which is often difficult to decipher due to lack of direct access to roots for analysis. Newer technologies and methods to analyze root response are coming forth and are bound to evolve with fast changing technologies like imaging technology and artificial intelligence. Nevertheless, understanding root is of prime importance to create high-yielding crops under water stress and RSA is going to be among the important breeding traits in near future.
Acknowledgments
AAE is thankful to the Department of Biotechnology, Govt. of India for providing the Ramalingaswami fellowship which facilitated the writing of this manuscript. SG acknowledges grant provided by the Institute of Eminence, University of Delhi sanction order IoE-DU/MRP/2022/056.