Improving sustainable cotton production through enhanced resilience to climate change using mutation breeding.

Abstract Cotton, being a leading commercial fibre crop, is grown on 20.5 million hectares in three major cotton-producing countries: China, India and Pakistan. Wide differences in yield per hectare exist among these countries and these are being aggravated by changing climate conditions, i.e. higher temperatures and significant seasonal and regional fluctuation in rainfall. Pakistan is one of the countries most affected by climate change. The disastrous effects of extreme periods of heat stress in cotton were very prominent in Pakistan during the growing seasons 2013-2014 (40-50% fruit abortion) and 2016-2017 (33% shortfall), which posed an alarming threat to the cotton-based economy of Pakistan. Poor resilience of the most commonly grown cotton varieties against extreme periods of heat stress are considered to be major factors for this drastic downfall in cotton production in Pakistan. Using the approach of induced mutation breeding, the Nuclear Institute for Agriculture and Biology (NIAB), Faisalabad, Pakistan, has demonstrated its capabilities in developing cotton mutants that can tolerate the changed climatic conditions and sustain high yields under contrasting environments. The results of studies on the phenological and physiological traits conferring heat tolerance are presented here for thermo-tolerant cotton mutants (NIAB-878, NIAB-545, NIAB-1048, NIAB-444, NIAB-1089, NIAB-1064, NIAB-1042) relative to FH-142 and FH-Lalazar. NIAB-878 excelled in heat tolerance by maintaining the highest anther dehiscence (82%) and minimum cell injury percentage (39%) along with maximum stomatal conductance (27.7 mmol CO2/m2/s), transpiration rate (6.89 μmol H2O/m2/s), net photosynthetic rate (44.6 mmol CO2/m2/s) and physiological water use efficiency (6.81 mmol CO2/μmol H2O) under the prevailing high temperatures.