EFFECTS OF DROUGHT STRESS ON THE QUALITY OF MAJOR OILSEED CROPS: IMPLICATIONS AND POSSIBLE MITIGATION STRATEGIES – A REVIEW

Oilseed crops are considered as one of the most essential dietary components in human consumption as well as animal feed. While drought is one of the most important abiotic stress that adversely effect on the yield and nutritional quality of major oilseed crops across the globe. Therefore, maintenance of nutritional quality in such crops under drought stress may offer good opportunities to provide sufficient human food as well as animal feed. The current review is to quantify the adverse effects of drought on the qualitative and quantitative traits of oilseed crops, suggest strategies for enhancing drought tolerance in crops. Although drought stress-induced effects on seed oil quality vary with larger environments as well as crop species and their interactions. When short and long term drought occurs at the seed/grain filling stage of crops, it might negatively influence the grain yield as well as the quality of crops. In the present review, we highlight that there are two ways to mitigate the adverse effect of drought viz., development of crop cultivars tolerant to drought and to follow improved management approaches including the exogenous application of osmoprotectants, essential macro and micronutrient management and using organic amendments (compost, green manures, cow manure and incorporation of crop residues) in soils in order to increase the yield and grain quality of oilseed crops.