Characterization of Advanced Tilling and Its Application in Cotton

Abstract

Yousuf Shafiq, Hafiz Adeel Anjam, Mustansar Mehmood, Mehboob Hussain, Muhammad Nouman Khalid, Munawar Iqbal, Jamshed Ali Badar, Ammara Ahsan, and Ahmed Ali

Among all the fibre crops, cotton is most important economic fibre crop. It is known as white gold because it contributes in the economic, industrial and agricultural sectors. In GDP, it contributes to about 1.6% and have share 7.8% in agricultural products. Pakistan is ranked 5th in world in term of consumption and has 4th in term of total cotton production in 2015-2016. The seed cotton yield and production are stagnant for more than decade in Pakistan, biotic and abiotic stresses are considered as major reasons of this stagnancy. Mutagenesis is an important tool in crop improvement. In breeding programs, mutation is an important tool for creating the variations. Powerful reverse genetic strategies allow the detection of induced point mutation. TILLING (Target Induced Local Lesions in Genomes) is genomic approach which is used for the screening of mutant and germplasm collection for the for the allelic variant in targeted gene. This kind of research explores an advanced TILLING population for various parameters. The main advantage of TILLING is that this technique can be used for any plant species, irrespective of its genome size, ploidy level and method of propagation.

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