Drought is the major abiotic stress that results in severe loss of yield to crops. It is estimated that there will be a steep rise in global water consumption in the coming years. On the other hand, it is also estimated that the sources of water will deplete due to rise in temperature and climate change. It is, therefore, critical to find out such genotypes of crops that have the ability to tolerate drought without much loss of yield. The genetic and molecular basis of drought tolerance has been investigated extensively and genes encoding drought-related transcription factors and functional proteins have been identified by allele mining. Allele mining is a promising way to isolate naturally occurring variation in alleles of individual genes with useful agronomic qualities. The superior alleles of such genes need to be fished out. | Potential of allele mining for improving drought tolerance in crops
