Increasing of barley productivity and adaptability by using genetic modification technologies

Abstract

The review presents the achievements in the research of barley stress tolerance molecular mechanisms to improve its economically valuable traits as a crop of agricultural production. Possible genetic engineering approaches developed in order to increase the barley resistance to abiotic stresses have been described. Special attention is paid to the genome improvement through the integration of heterologous genes. The targeted genes and promotors perspective for transformations, their efficiency in dependence to other transformation factors have been summarized and analyzed. The latest technologies of targeted mutagenesis used for genome editing (ZFN, TALEN and CRISPR/Cas9 systems) are observed. The examples of creation of new barley forms with increased resistance to drought, soil acidity, aluminum toxicity and salt stress by using gene technologies are given. It is shown that genetic modification allows not only to accelerate the experiment process of new genotypes creation, but also represents a research tool for the analysis and identification of gene functions. А large number of sequences encoding valuable traits of barley were identified by means of silencing and RNA interference techniques. The prospects of development of post-genomic technologies for use in practical breeding of this culture are discussed.

Keywords

• barley
• stress tolerance
• post-genomic selection
• genetic transformation
• genome editing