Drought stress tolerance in wheat: Recent QTL mapping advances

Wheat is belonging to grass family and one of the most cultivated field crops growing world widely. Wheat is considered as a major crop to meet the food and nutrition requirement of rapidly increasing population and therefore helping to meet the challenges of global food security. However, climate changes increasing the spells of abiotic stresses from which drought is the most prevalent and damaging stress factor effecting the overall production and nutritious value of wheat globally. To cope with this problem, more resilient and stress tolerant wheat genotypes are required to fulfill the world's food demand. Advancement in molecular breeding technologies provide an efficient way forward to improve the wheat. More robust and economical sequencing coupled with quantitative trait loci (QTL) mapping led to the discovery of novel drought tolerant alleles/genes. These unique QTLs can be used in breeding programs to develop drought-tolerant wheat genotypes.