Agricultural scientists face the dual challenge of breeding input-responsive, widely adoptable and climate-resilient varieties of crop plants and developing such varieties at a faster pace. Integrating the gains of genomics with modern-day phenomics will lead to increased breeding efficiency which in turn offers great promise to develop such varieties rapidly. Plant phenotyping techniques have impressively evolved during the last two decades. The low-cost, automated and semi-automated methods for data acquisition, storage and analysis are now available which allow precise quantitative analysis of plant structure and function; and genetic dissection of complex traits. Appropriate plant types can now be quickly developed that respond favorably to low input and resource-limited environments and address the challenges of subsistence agriculture. The present review focuses on the need of systematic, rapid, minimal invasive and low-cost plant phenotyping. It also discusses its evolution to modern day high throughput phenotyping (HTP), traits amenable to HTP, integration of HTP with genomics and the scope of utilizing these tools for crop improvement.

Drought stress is considered a severe threat to crop production. It adversely affects the morpho-physiological, biochemical and molecular functions of the plants, especially in short duration crops like mungbean. In the past few decades, significant progress has been made towards enhancing climate resilience in legumes through classical and next-generation breeding coupled with omics approaches. Various defence mechanisms have been reported as key players in crop adaptation to drought stress. Many researchers have identified potential donors, QTLs/genes and candidate genes associated to drought tolerance-related traits. However, cloning and exploitation of these loci/gene(s) in breeding programmes are still limited. To bridge the gap between theoretical research and practical breeding, we need to reveal the omics-assisted genetic variations associated with drought tolerance in mungbean to tackle this stress. Furthermore, the use of wild relatives in breeding programmes for drought tolerance is also limited and needs to be focused. Even after six years of decoding the whole genome sequence of mungbean, the genome-wide characterization and expression of various gene families and transcriptional factors are still lacking. Due to the complex nature of drought tolerance, it also requires integrating high throughput multi-omics approaches to increase breeding efficiency and genomic selection for rapid genetic gains to develop drought-tolerant mungbean cultivars. This review highlights the impact of drought stress on mungbean and mitigation strategies for breeding high-yielding drought-tolerant mungbean varieties through classical and modern omics technologies.

Globally, abiotic stresses, such as temperature (heat or cold), water (drought and flooding), and salinity, cause significant losses in crop production and have adverse effects on plant growth and development. A variety of DNA-based molecular markers, such as SSRs, RFLPs, AFLPs, SNPs, etc., have been used to screen germplasms for stress tolerance and the QTL mapping of stress-related genes. Such molecular-marker-assisted selection strategies can quicken the development of tolerant/resistant cultivars to withstand abiotic stresses. Oilseeds such as rapeseed, mustard, peanuts, soybeans, sunflower, safflower, sesame, flaxseed, and castor are the most important source of edible oil worldwide. Although oilseed crops are known for their capacity to withstand abiotic challenges, there is a significant difference between actual and potential yields due to the adaptation and tolerance to severe abiotic pressures. This review summarizes the applications of molecular markers to date to achieve abiotic stress tolerance in major oilseed crops. The molecular markers that have been reported for genetic diversity studies and the mapping and tagging of genes/QTLs for drought, heavy metal stress, salinity, flooding, cold and heat stress, and their application in the MAS are presented.

Late embryogenesis abundant (LEA) proteins are identified in many crops for their response and role in adaptation to various abiotic stresses, such as drought, salinity, and temperature. The LEA genes have been studied systematically in several crops but not in Vigna crops. In this study, we reported the first comprehensive analysis of the LEA gene family in three legume species, namely, mung bean (Vigna radiata), adzuki bean (Vigna angularis), and cowpea (Vigna unguiculata), and the cross-species expression of VrLEA genes in a wild tetraploid species, Vigna glabrescens. A total of 201 LEA genes from three Vigna crops were identified harboring the LEA conserved motif. Among these 55, 64, and 82 LEA genes were identified in mung bean, adzuki bean, and cowpea genomes, respectively. These LEA genes were grouped into eight different classes. Our analysis revealed that the cowpea genome comprised all eight classes of LEA genes, whereas the LEA-6 class was absent in the mung bean genome. Similarly, LEA-5 and LEA-6 were absent in the adzuki bean genome. The analysis of LEA genes provides an insight into their structural and functional diversity in the Vigna genome. The genes, such as VrLEA-2, VrLEA-40, VrLEA-47, and VrLEA-55, were significantly upregulated in the heat-tolerant genotype under stress conditions indicating the basis of heat tolerance. The successful amplification and expression of VrLEA genes in V. glabrescens indicated the utility of the developed markers in mung bean improvement. The results of this study increase our understanding of LEA genes and provide robust candidate genes for future functional investigations and a basis for improving heat stress tolerance in Vigna crops.

Field pea is one of the important short-duration cool season pulse crops which contributes significantly towards food and nutritional security. Two heat-susceptible (HS) and two heat-tolerant (HT) genotypes were selected from the previous study for further characterization. A significant variation was observed for morpho-physiological traits studied. Principal component analysis explained that first two principal components, i.e., PC1 and PC2 showed 76.5% of the total variance in optimal condition, whereas 91.2% of the total variance was covered by the first two PCs in heat stress environment. The seed yield per plant determined significant and positive association with superoxide dismutase and number of seeds per pod under optimal conditions, whereas under heat stress condition, it was positively associated with number of effective pods per plant, biological yield per plant, proline, pod length, number of seeds per pod, superoxide dismutase, and peroxidase. The significant reduction was noticed in the susceptible genotypes, whereas tolerant genotypes showed stable and non-significant reduction in chlorophyll content. Further, minimum cell damage and higher hydrogen peroxide production was noticed in the susceptible genotypes. In addition, the biochemical characterization of HS and HT genotypes revealed that the higher expression of peroxidase, superoxide dismutase, and catalase modulates the tolerant responses in HT genotypes. These genotypes were further used in developing heat-tolerant field pea genotypes.