Drought, arguably the greatest threat to food production worldwide, was the focal point of a high-level, weeklong workshop supported by The Rockefeller Foundation and CIMMYT, held in May 2004 in Cuernavaca, Mexico.

Information available for other cereals and the limited or circumstantial evidence available for rice indicate that we can now breed varieties that have improved yield under drought and produce high yields in the good seasons. This manual aims to help plant breeders develop such varieties.

Much of Europe has been complaining recently of unseasonal weathe- disastrous floods in Eastern Europe, temperatures reaching over 40"C in Central Europe, no decent rain for months in parts of the Balkans, coupled with unusually long and severe frosts in winter. Indeed, wheat yields in Serbia for 2003 are expected to be reduced by over 30% because of the combination of a long frost during winter with insufficient protective snow cover, very low rainfall in the spring months and sudden high temperatures reaching over 30·C at the time of flowering. So, with this background, it is very timely that this volume on Abiotic Stresses in Plants has been put together. Each of the eight chapters focuses on a different aspect of abiotic stress, presenting reviews of recent advances in the subject. Rather than summarise the contents of each chapter, I'll focus on some of the advances in technologies presented here for elucidating the molecular, genetic and biochemical mechanisms that regulate plant responses to stresses and which also provide opportunities for improving plant performance under abiotic stresses. The last 20 years has seen a revolution in the availability of technologies for this, starting with the development of transformation technologies to study the role of an individual gene, then came molecular marker technologies to study the genetic control of stress responses, and in recent years the '-omics' (genomics, proteomics and metabolomics) have been developed to create an integrated picture of how the plant responds to a particular stress.

Advances in Rice Research for Abiotic Stress Tolerance provides an important guide to recognizing, assessing and addressing the broad range of environmental factors that can inhibit rice yield. As a staple food for nearly half of the world's population, and in light of projected population growth, improving and increasing rice yield is imperative. This book presents current research on abiotic stresses including extreme temperature variance, drought, hypoxia, salinity, heavy metal, nutrient deficiency and toxicity stresses. Going further, it identifies a variety of approaches to alleviate the damaging effects and improving the stress tolerance of rice. Advances in Rice Research for Abiotic Stress Tolerance provides an important reference for those ensuring optimal yields from this globally important food crop. - Covers aspects of abiotic stress, from research, history, practical field problems faced by rice, and the possible remedies to the adverse effects of abiotic stresses - Provides practical insights into a wide range of management and crop improvement practices - Presents a valuable, single-volume sourcebook for rice scientists dealing with agronomy, physiology, molecular biology and biotechnology