Molecular Interventions for Developing Climate-Smart Crops: A Forage Perspective

This edited book is collection of information on molecular interventions needed for climate-resilient forage crops. The main focus is to address the gap in the advanced scientific knowledge for the forage species. Agriculture is extremely vulnerable to climate, and even slight change in climatic factors such as temperature causes tremendous losses in yield potential. Forage crops are crucial in global food security and environmental sustainability and face several environmental challenges in field conditions. However, the research on forage crops is far-off compared to agricultural crops and causes a substantial gap in forage demand and productivity. Further, this gap is directly associated with animal health, reproduction, and productivity. Abiotic stresses mainly affect the plant's crucial processes, ultimately reducing the final yield. The problem of abiotic stresses is more frequent in forage crops as they are growing and cultivated in less productive soil and harsh conditions. This book discusses current aspects of crucial physiological, biochemical and molecular processes in forage crops, which are essential for forage crops improvement. The text's major focus is on the advanced technologies and approaches such as seed priming, bio-fortification, breeding, omics, transgenic and bioengineering of metabolic pathways in unique ways, which helps us develop innovative solutions for forage crops. This book covers all the crucial advance technologies, which help mitigate the abiotic stresses in forage crops. We believe that this book will initiate and introduce the readers to state-of-the-art developments and unique in this field of study. This book is of interest to teachers, researchers, climate change scientists, capacity builders, and policymakers. Also, the book serves as additional reading material for undergraduate and graduate students of agriculture, forestry, ecology, soil science, and environmental sciences. National and international agricultural scientists and policymakers will also find this a worthwhile read.

Dr. Rajesh Kumar Singhal is currently working as a scientist in the Division of Crop Improvement, ICAR-Indian Grassland and Fodder Research Institute, Jhansi (U.P) India. He has received his PhD from IAS, BHU India. He has eight-year experience in different areas of Plant Physiology aspects such as drought stress, seed priming, artificial night light pollution, and multiple abiotic stresses related to different crops. Currently, he is working on fodder oat improvement, oat modelling for climate change, and abiotic stress in forage crops. He has published more than 25 research and review papers in reputed journals. He also published more than 15 chapters with Elsevier, Springer and Taylor& Francis. In addition, he has also published "A quick approach to Plant Physiology, Biochemistry and Biotechnology" 1^st (2018) and 2^nd (2020).

Dr Shahid Ahmed is a principal scientist and head of the Crop Improvement Division atICAR-Indian Grassland and Forage Research Institute Jhansi, India. Last 15 years he is working on breeding and crop improvement in forage crops. He has a lot of experience in biofortification, genetic diversity, marker selection, disease resistance and nutrient management in forage crops and develops a number of technologies. He published 32 research articles, 6 books, 3 chapters, 1 conference paper, 2 technical reports, and handled a number of projects related to forage crop improvements. He published research articles in very high-rated journals such as the Journal of Plant Growth Regulation, plant breeding, Agronomy, Plant Breeding etc.

Dr. Saurabh Pandey Currently working as an Assistant Professor, at the Department of Agriculture at Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, Punjab, India. He conferred Ph.D. (Plant Virology) from the National Institute of Plant Genome Research, New Delhi. He has eight years of experience in different areas of Plant Biotechnology aspects such asplant stress biology, plant virus interactions, abiotic stresses, bio-fortification, Molecular marker studies and metabolism. He has published about half a dozen research papers in various journals of international repute. Dr. Pandey has authored many book chapters about Molecular markers, Genomics, Plant Breeding, and Plant molecular virology, catering to the needs of modern agriculture research. He has been an active member of the Indian Virological Society, the Indian Academy of Horticultural Sciences, and the Society of Plant Biochemistry and Biotechnology. Dr. Pandey is the recipient of the 'Gold Medal and Best PG thesis award For M.Sc. Thesis and various other awards for his research work.

Mr. Subhash Chand is pursuing his Ph.D. from the Division of Genetics, ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi (India). He is posted at ICAR-Indian Grassland and Fodder Research Institute, Jhansi. He has 3 years of experience in forage and fodder crops including oat, berseem, lucerne, guinea grass, BN Hybrids, etc while working in AICRP on Forage crops and utilization. He has published more than 10 research papers in reputed international and national journals. He has published more than 10 book chapters in different books. He has published 5 books related to fodder crops published by AICRP on Forage crops and utilization. His area of specialization is genetics and plant breeding, quantitative genetics, disease resistance breeding, and molecular breeding. He was also awarded NTS, JRF, and SRF during his academic period by the ICAR.