Emerging Technologies and Management of Crop Stress Tolerance

Volume 1-Biological Techniques

Parvaiz Ahmad, Saiema Rasool

• Publisher: Academic Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780128010884
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Agronomy
• Index: Technology & Engineering

Emerging Technologies and Management of Crop Stress Tolerance: Volume 1 - Biological Techniques presents the latest technologies used by scientists for improvement the crop production and explores the various roles of these technologies for the enhancement of crop productivity and inhibition of pathogenic bacteria that can cause disease.

This resource provides a comprehensive review of how proteomics, genomics, transcriptomics, ionomics, and micromics are a pathway to improve plant stress tolerance to increase productivity and meet the agricultural needs of the growing human population. This valuable resource will help any scientist have a better understanding of environmental stresses to improve resource management within a world of limited resources.

• Includes the most recent advances methods and applications of biotechnology to crop science
• Discusses different techniques of genomics, proteomics, transcriptomics and nanotechnology
• Promotes the prevention of potential diseases to inhibit bacteria postharvest quality of fruits and vegetable crops by advancing application and research
• Presents a thorough account of research results and critical reviews

Chapter 1

Genomic Approaches and Abiotic Stress Tolerance in Plants

Bushra Rashid, Tayyab Husnain and Sheikh Riazuddin

Environmental threats that comprise factors related to abiotic stresses are among the major challenges to crop plants, which limit the yield and productivity. Plants respond to this threat for their endurance at the cellular and molecular level. Understanding plant responses to these stresses is imperative and thought provoking in order to combat the challenges in agricultural research. Consequently, a complex interaction between signaling molecules and pathways has been triggered. Success in breeding for better adapted varieties to abiotic stresses depends upon the combined efforts of various research domains including plant and cell physiology, molecular biology, and genetics. Genomics approaches for considering plant responses to stress have provided potent tools for in-depth dissection of tolerance mechanisms, primarily with models and latterly with other plant species. As an alternative to conventional breeding, a more competent technology is marker-assisted breeding, which has identified a number of desirable genomic regions (quantitative trait loci, QTL) of different crops under stress conditions. A large number of datasets are available through expressed sequence tags (ESTs) for species with larger but unknown genome sequences. Microarray technology is expanding rapidly and gene expression has been measured for a number of plant species, which has advanced our knowledge of the complex interaction between signaling molecules and pathways. Proteomics and metabolomics studies provide a broad representation of data related to abiotic stress outcomes and it will be supportive to improve crop breeding in the near future. Identification and isolation of abiotic stress-tolerant genes and transformation technology has made real progress in understanding how plants cope with these stresses as well as the different constituents exploited in the signaling and response pathways.

Keywords

abiotic stress tolerance; plant biotechnology; molecular biology; plant genomics

1.1 Introduction

The main goals of agricultural plant science for many decades have been to increase the yield and improve the quality of agricultural products. To attain these goals, improvement in the protection of crops against different types of abiotic stresses is important. Since the plants are sessile and complete their life cycle in a single location, they are afflicted by environmental challenges such as abiotic stresses, which include light, cold, heat, nutrition, water, salinity, and toxic concentrations of metals. As much as 80% of the crop harvest can be destroyed by these stresses. Abiotic stresses in crop plants negatively influence the whole plant and ultimately reduce the yield, whether it is for domestic use or for industrial purposes (Munns, 2002; Ashraf, 2002). Another drawback is the restricted use and further extension of the land for crop cultivation, which limits farmers to grow enough food to cope with the increased demand of the growing population. Other environmental factors and agricultural practices, like poor drainage, restricted rainfall, and higher vapor transpiration rate in combination with poor water and soil quality, may also contribute to enhance the problem in arid and semi-arid areas (Ashraf, 2004; Bao et al., 2009; Bhattarai and Midmore, 2009), and once the level is beyond the threshold then it will be more challenging and expensive to recover (Pisinaras et al., 2010).

Many agronomically important crops are affected by the abiotic stresses at different developmental stages, such as germination, leaf area and size, shoot and root length and weight, stem thickness, plant height, fruit initiation, setting, and maturity (Zhu, 2001; Akram et al., 2009b; Rodriguez-Uribe et al., 2011). Primary processes in the plants affected by abiotic stresses are photosynthesis (Munns et al., 2006; Chaves et al., 2009), osmotic potential (Hasegawa et al., 2000; Bor et al., 2003), stomatal conductance (Xue et al., 2004; Bao et al., 2009), and/or a combination of all these dynamics. These effects may ultimately influence the morphological, physiological, biochemical, cellular, and molecular mechanisms of the whole plant. Alteration in these processes may reduce the plants’ fresh and dry biomass and reduce the yield (Azevedo-Neto et al., 2004; Higbie et al., 2010).

Plants have developed tolerance to abiotic stresses to some extent by evolving defense systems such as adjusting osmotic regulation and controlled uptake of ions (Senadheera and Maathuis, 2009), but this system is very complex and not completely understood. There is relative interaction of the mechanisms involved at the physiological, biochemical, morphological, and molecular levels. There are a number of means of coping with these problems such as land reclamation through hydrological and chemical means but these are expensive (Corbishley and Pearce, 2007). Conventional breeding technology has restricted success in developing stress-tolerant cultivars due to variant germplasm in order to exploit natural or artificially induced diversity and, subsequently, to select for desired properties. The problem with traditional plant breeding is that it is time consuming and laborious; it is difficult to modify single traits; and it relies on existing genetic variability (Yamaguchi and Blumwald, 2005; Ashraf et al., 2008; Zhang et al., 2008). Currently, it is well understood that these complex mechanisms generally involve interactions of a number of genes at the molecular level (Flowers, 2004). Classification of candidate genes for stress tolerance and their expression is required to understand the metabolic phenomena. Success in breeding for better adapted varieties to abiotic stresses depends upon the concerted efforts of various research domains including plant and cell physiology, molecular biology, and genetics.

Genome-based studies have the potential to endorse persistent and improved plant genetic development. The progress made since the last decade related to the studies of functional genomics is becoming increasingly important as the genome sequences of model crop species have been released. Therefore, alterations to the genes’ behavior, such as overexpression or silencing related to the fabrication of particular plant components, are a possibility. This would be helpful to reveal regulatory mechanisms linked with the biosynthesis and catabolism of metabolites in crop plants (Gambino and Gribaudo, 2012). Therefore, for future progress in this area, efforts are required to develop genomic resources and tools for basic and applied genetics, genomics, and breeding research. This will pave the way to understand the molecular and metabolic pathways involved in the adaptation of plants to environmental challenges.

Nevertheless, significant progress in genomics studies has made this more valuable as this technology is one among other tools that have been exploited to recognize stress responsive genes in several species of plants (Rabbani et al., 2003; Arpat et al., 2004; Micheletto et al., 2007). This chapter presents reviews related to genomics and molecular processes associated with the developments for abiotic stress responses and tolerance in plants with significant features of the effects of stress on different crop plants.

1.2 Physiological, cellular, and biochemical mechanisms of abiotic stress in plants

Crop production is severely affected ultimately reducing yield by abiotic stress. According to thei...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• About the Editors
• List of Contributors
• Chapter 1. Genomic Approaches and Abiotic Stress Tolerance in Plants
• Chapter 2. Metabolomics Role in Crop Improvement
• Chapter 3. Transcription Factors and Environmental Stresses in Plants
• Chapter 4. Plant Resistance under Cold Stress: Metabolomics, Proteomics, and Genomic Approaches
• Chapter 5. Genetic Engineering of Crop Plants for Abiotic Stress Tolerance
• Chapter 6. Bt Crops: A Sustainable Approach towards Biotic Stress Tolerance
• Chapter 7. Modern Tools for Enhancing Crop Adaptation to Climatic Changes
• Chapter 8. Interactions of Nanoparticles with Plants: An Emerging Prospective in the Agriculture Industry
• Chapter 9. Role of miRNAs in Abiotic and Biotic Stresses in Plants
• Chapter 10. Gene Silencing: A Novel Cellular Defense Mechanism Improving Plant Productivity under Environmental Stresses
• Chapter 11. The Role of Carbohydrates in Plant Resistance to Abiotic Stresses
• Chapter 12. Role of Glucosinolates in Plant Stress Tolerance
• Chapter 13. Plant Responses to Iron, Manganese, and Zinc Deficiency Stress
• Chapter 14. Role of Trace Elements in Alleviating Environmental Stress
• Chapter 15. Nutritional Stress in Dystrophic Savanna Soils of the Orinoco Basin: Biological Responses to Low Nitrogen and Phosphorus Availabilities
• Chapter 16. Silicon and Selenium: Two Vital Trace Elements that Confer Abiotic Stress Tolerance to Plants
• Chapter 17. Herbicides, Pesticides, and Plant Tolerance: An Overview
• Chapter 18. Effects of Humic Materials on Plant Metabolism and Agricultural Productivity
• Chapter 19. Climate Changes and Potential Impacts on Quality of Fruit and Vegetable Crops
• Chapter 20. Interplays of Plant Circadian Clock and Abiotic Stress Response Networks
• Chapter 21. Development of Water Saving Techniques for Sugarcane (Saccharum officinarum L.) in the Arid Environment of Punjab, Pakistan
• Index