Executive Summary : | Global climate change poses a serious threat to agricultural productivity and food security. Moreover, increasing the world human population will exacerbate the situation of food supply and nutritional quality. Currently, food consumption demand is fulfilled by staple cereal crops such as wheat and rice. Although these crops are a good source of carbohydrates, they are deficient in proteins and minerals. Thus, our food system needs transformation wherein crop diversification should be promoted. Adoption of underutilized grain crops like pseudocereals and millets as future crops could foster food and nutritional security. Buckwheat (Fagopyrum spp.) is a multi-purpose and nutritionally rich pseudocereal crop growing in the cold desert of the Himalayas. It can grow grown to an elevation of 4500 m, tolerate harsh cold and drought episodes, and flourish in nutritionally poor soils. It has become one of the vital food crops of the tribes living in high-altitude cold deserts. Buckwheat has gained special attention because of its stupendous agronomic, nutritional, and nutraceutical potential. It is a gluten-free substitute for major cereal like rice and wheat. Buckwheat has huge medicinal properties such as lowering serum cholesterol, cancer-fighting properties, boosting immunity, etc. Climate change poses a serious threat to agricultural productivity and food security. Also, the Himalayan region is warming up. The growing world human population will exacerbate the problems associated with food security and nutritional quality. Underutilized pseudocereals have emerged as future crops. Despite its superiority over traditional cereal crops, statistics show that the area of buckwheat cultivation decreased by 46% in 2016-17 compared to 1970-71 (Report of Directorate of Economics and Statistics, Department of Agriculture and Cooperation, India). The downfall in buckwheat area cultivation and production emphasizes its sensitivity to temperature rise and the lack of crop improvement efforts and selection of improved varieties. The adverse effects of high-temperature stress are investigated in detail in several cereal and horticultural crops and several genetic and epigenetic regions have been identified to provide tolerance against heat stress. However, in the case of buckwheat limited efforts are made in this direction. Based on these, the project has two objectives 1) to identify epigenomic regions (DNA methylation) associated with high-temperature tolerance in buckwheat, 2) to develop epimarkers for breeding of high-temperature tolerant buckwheat varieties Overall, the project will provide unprecedented opportunities to increase our fundamental knowledge on high-temperature stress responses in underutilized pseudocereal buckwheat and the development of its epigenomic resources, which in the long run can be used to develop high-temperature resilient varieties. |