Crops tolerant to drought and salt stress may be developed by two approaches. First, major crops may be improved by introducing genes from tolerant plants. For example, many major crops have wild relatives that are more tolerant to drought and high salinity than the cultivated crops, and, once deciphered, the underlying resilience mechanisms could be genetically manipulated to produce crops with improved tolerance. Secondly, some minor (orphan) crops cultivated in marginal areas are already drought and salt tolerant. Improving the agronomic performance of these crops may be an effective way to increase crop and food diversity, and an alternative to engineering tolerance in major crops. Quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd.), a nutritious minor crop that tolerates drought and salinity better than most other crops, is an ideal candidate for both of these approaches. Although quinoa has yet to reach its potential as a fully domesticated crop, breeding efforts to improve the plant have been limited. Molecular and genetic techniques combined with traditional breeding are likely to change this picture. Here we analyse protein-coding sequences in the quinoa genome that are orthologous to domestication genes in established crops. Mutating only a limited number of such genes by targeted mutagenesis appears to be a promising route for accelerating the improvement of quinoa and generating a nutritious high-yielding crop that can meet the future demand for food production in a changing climate.

中文翻译：

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加快改良抗灾作物藜麦的前景。

可以通过两种方法开发耐干旱和耐盐胁迫的农作物。首先，可以通过引入耐性植物的基因来改良主要农作物。例如，许多主要农作物的野生近缘种比栽培农作物对干旱和高盐分的耐受性更高，一旦解密，就可以对潜在的抗逆机制进行基因改造，以生产具有更高耐受性的农作物。其次，在边缘地区种植的一些次要（孤儿）作物已经耐旱和耐盐。改善这些农作物的农艺性能可能是增加作物和粮食多样性的有效途径，并且是对主要农作物的工程耐受性的替代方法。藜（藜藜Willd。是一种营养丰富的次要作物，比大多数其他农作物更好地耐受干旱和盐分，是这两种方法的理想选择。尽管藜麦尚未充分发挥其作为完全驯化作物的潜力，但用于改良该植物的育种工作受到了限制。分子和遗传技术与传统育种相结合可能会改变这种状况。在这里，我们分析了藜麦基因组中与驯化作物中的驯化基因直系同源的蛋白质编码序列。通过定向诱变仅突变有限数量的此类基因，似乎是加速藜麦改良和生产营养丰富的高产作物的有前途的途径，该作物可以适应气候变化对食品生产的未来需求。