Plants under abiotic stress are those suffering from drought, extreme temperatures, flood and other natural—but non-living—factors. Abiotic stress is responsible for reduced yields in several major crops, and climate change is focusing research in this area. To minimize cellular damage cause by such stresses, plants have evolved complex, well-coordinated adaptive responses that operate at the transcriptional level. Understanding these processes is key to manipulating plant performance to withstand stress. This book deals with the role of gene silencing in the adaptation of plants to these stresses, and documents the molecular regulatory systems for the abiotic response.

Plants have to manage a series of environmental stresses throughout their entire lifespan. Among these, abiotic stress is the most detrimental; one that is responsible for nearly 50% of crop yield reduction and appears to be a potential threat to global food security in coming decades. Plant growth and development reduces drastically due to adverse effects of abiotic stresses. It has been estimated that crop can exhibit only 30% of their genetic potentiality under abiotic stress condition. So, this is a fundamental need to understand the stress responses to facilitate breeders to develop stress resistant and stress tolerant cultivars along with good management practices to withstand abiotic stresses. Also, a holistic approach to understanding the molecular and biochemical interactions of plants is important to implement the knowledge of resistance mechanisms under abiotic stresses. Agronomic practices like selecting cultivars that is tolerant to wide range of climatic condition, planting date, irrigation scheduling, fertilizer management could be some of the effective short-term adaptive tools to fight against abiotic stresses. In addition, “system biology” and “omics approaches” in recent studies offer a long-term opportunity at the molecular level in dealing with abiotic stresses. The genetic approach, for example, selection and identification of major conditioning genes by linkage mapping and quantitative trait loci (QTL), production of mutant genes and transgenic introduction of novel genes, has imparted some tolerant characteristics in crop varieties from their wild ancestors. Recently research has revealed the interactions between micro-RNAs (miRNAs) and plant stress responses exposed to salinity, freezing stress and dehydration. Accordingly transgenic approaches to generate stress-tolerant plant are one of the most interesting researches to date. This book presents the recent development of agronomic and molecular approaches in conferring plant abiotic stress tolerance in an organized way. The present volume will be of great interest among research students and teaching community, and can also be used as reference material by professional researchers.

Abiotic Stresses explores innovative methods for breeding new varieties of major crops with resistance to environmental stresses that limit crop production worldwide, such as drought, salinity, flooding, and mineral deficiency. Experts provide you with basic principles and techniques of plant breeding as well as work done in relation to improving resistance in specific important world food crops. The book supplies extensive bibliographies at the end of each chapter, as well as tables and figures that illustrate the research findings. This timely resource will help scientists and academics in botany, plant breeding, plant environmental stress studies, agriculture, and horticulture modify and improve breeding programs globally. To view an excerpt online, find the book on our QuickSearch catalog at www.HaworthPress.com.

This book discusses molecular approaches in plant as response to environmental factors, such as variations in temperature, water availability, salinity, and metal stress. The book also covers the impact of increasing global population, urbanization, and industrialization on these molecular behaviors. It covers the natural tolerance mechanism which plants adopt to cope with adverse environments, as well as the novel molecular strategies for engineering the plants in human interest. This book will be of interest to researchers working on the impact of the changing environment on plant ecology, issues of crop yield, and nutrient quantity and quality in agricultural crops. The book will be of interest to researchers as well as policy makers in the environmental and agricultural domains.

Environmental insults such as extremes of temperature, extremes of water status as well as deteriorating soil conditions pose major threats to agriculture and food security. Employing contemporary tools and techniques from all branches of science, attempts are being made worldwide to understand how plants respond to abiotic stresses with the aim to help manipulate plant performance that will be better suited to withstand these stresses. This book on abiotic stress attempts to search for possible answers to several basic questions related to plant responses towards abiotic stresses. Presented in this book is a holistic view of the general principles of stress perception, signal transduction and regulation of gene expression. Further, chapters analyze not only model systems but extrapolate interpretations obtained from models to crops. Lastly, discusses how stress-tolerant crop or model plants have been or are being raised through plant breeding and genetic engineering approaches. Twenty three chapters, written by international authorities, integrate molecular details with overall plant structure and physiology, in a text-book style, including key references.

Over the past decade, our understanding of plant adaptation to environmental stress has grown considerably. This book focuses on stress caused by the inanimate components of the environment associated with climatic, edaphic and physiographic factors that substantially limit plant growth and survival. Categorically these are abiotic stresses, which include drought, salinity, non-optimal temperatures and poor soil nutrition. Another stress, herbicides, is covered in this book to highlight how plants are impacted by abiotic stress originating from anthropogenic sources. The book also addresses the high degree to which plant responses to quite diverse forms of environmental stress are interconnected, describing the ways in which the plant utilizes and integrates many common signals and subsequent pathways to cope with less favorable conditions. The book is directed at researchers and professionals in plant physiology, cell biology and molecular biology, in both the academic and industrial sectors.

Biologists worldwide now speak the scientific language of molecular biology and use the same molecular tools. Interest is growing in the molecular biology of abiotic stress tolerance and modes of installing better tolerant mechanisms in crop plants. Current studies make plants capable of sustaining their yields even under stressful conditions. Further, this information may form the basis for its application in biotechnology and bioinformatics.