Plant Abiotic Stress Physiology

Volume 1: Responses and Adaptations

Khalid Rehman Hakeem, Tariq Aftab, Khalid Rehman Hakeem, Tariq Aftab

• Publisher: Apple Academic Press
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000400984
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Scienze biologiche
• Subtopic: Scienza generale

This two-volume set highlights the various innovative and emerging techniques and molecular applications that are currently being used in plant abiotic stress physiology. Volume 1: Responses and Adaptations focuses on the responses and adaptations of plants to stress factors at the cellular and molecular levels and offers a variety of advanced management strategies and technologies. Volume 2: Molecular Advancements introduces a range of state-of-the-art molecular advances for the mitigation of abiotic stress in plants.

With contributions from specialists in the field, Volume 1 first discusses the physiology and defense mechanisms of plants and the various kinds of stress, such as from challenging environments, climate change, and nutritional deficiencies. It goes on to discuss trailblazing management techniques that include genetics approaches for improving abiotic stress tolerance in crop plants along with CRISPR/CAS-mediated genome editing technologies.

Volume 2 discusses how plants have developed diverse physiological and molecular adjustments to safeguard themselves under challenging conditions and how emerging new technologies can utilize these plant adaptations to enhance plant resistance. These include using plant-environment interactions to develop crop species that are resilient to climate change, applying genomics and phenomics approaches from the study of abiotic stress tolerance and more.

Agriculture today faces countless challenges to meet the rising need for sustainable food supplies and guarantees of high-quality nourishment for a quickly increasing population. To ensure sufficient food production, it is necessary to address the difficult environmental circumstances that are causing cellular oxidative stress in plants due to abiotic factors, which play a defining role in shaping yield of crop plants. These two volumes help to meet these challenges by providing a rich source of information on plant abiotic stress physiology and effective management techniques.

CHAPTER 1 Innovations in Crop Production: An Amalgamation of Abiotic Stress Physiology and Technology

SHREYA GUPTA¹ and SHABIR A. RATHER²*

¹National Institute of Plant Genome Research, New Delhi, India

²School of Integrative Plant Sciences, Section of Plant Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca 14853, NY, USA

*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected].

ABSTRACT

Abiotic stresses are well known to alter plant growth and development globally. Their impacts are destructive and adversely affect crops at different stages of their life cycle. Abiotic stresses include drought, salinity, heat, and nutrients deficiency that are known to damage the agronomically essential crops. Thus, the need of the hour is to use advanced tools that understand the physiological, cellular, and molecular aspects including plant breeding and genomics approach to develop stress-tolerant crops efficiently. The holistic approach of understanding this coalescence of improving the crops under abiotic stress and the progress in the molecular technology includes application of biotechnological tools such as transgenics, marker-assisted breeding, targeted genome editing using clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR)–CRISPR-associated protein 9, and bioinformatic tools. Thus, culminating research into the crosstalk signaling pathways, where plant growth hormones and their regulatory genes frame a multidimensional interactome under combined stress conditions. Besides the study of genome and transcriptome, the new era of proteome and metabolome has been utilized to understand their effect on photosynthetic pathways under abiotic stress. Water scarcity and nutrient deficiency are a major threat to food security worldwide and to cope up with drought stress, the transgenics approach seems promising. The new technologies have revolutionized the research and are extensively used to modify the target genes in crop plants that are important regulators during abiotic stress, which can further help in generating new varieties with novel stress-tolerant traits. The chapter will highlight the improvements in crop productivity by using advance ground-breaking techniques. Such advances are replacing the conventional techniques, not in terms of time and labor, but also in cost-effectiveness and thus promote agricultural sustainability and ensure food security globally.

1.1 INTRODUCTION

Abiotic stresses are well known to alter plant growth and development worldwide. Their impacts are destructive and adversely affect crops at different stages of their life cycle. The abiotic class of stresses encompasses salinity, cold, heat, light, drought, and nutrients deficiency, and heavy metal toxicity is known to damage the agronomically essential crops. These stresses damage the crops at different stages of plant growth and development from their germination to flowering and fruiting [1]. During primary metabolic processes such as photosynthesis and respiration, osmotic balance is majorly affected by these abiotic stresses that ultimately hamper physiochemical, molecular, and cellular pathways in the plant [2]. However, being sessile, plants are quite smart and have developed various mechanisms for coping with stress. The use of conventional practices for crop improvements under stress required time and labor and also the expensiveness of these methods have caused their shift toward the need for modern tools.

In addition, the complexity of these stresses and their responses are multidimensional and dynamics is more intensive that is not resolved by these previously used tools [3]. Thus, for a holistic approach of understanding this coalescence of improving the crops under abiotic stress and the progress in the molecular technology includes application of biotechnological tools such as transgenics, marker-assisted breeding, targeted genome editing using clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR)– CRISPR-associated protein 9(Cas9), and bioinformatic tools. The modern technological advancements include genomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics approach combined with the systems biology that serves to have better potential to understand the effects of stress over crops more robustly and ubiquitously all over the plant parts in comparatively lesser time. Further, the study of crosstalk signaling pathways where plant growth hormones and their regulatory genes frame a multidimensional interactome under combined stress conditions seems a promising approach. For example, the genome sequencing projects of important crops have been successfully achieved.

In addition, many bioinformatics-based databases are available for many cereal crops. Most widely used tools such as CyVerse and galaxy are used for high-throughput analysis [4]. Even the molecular markers have shown to be an unusual approach for enhancing the crop yield, for example, for the screening quantitative trait loci (QTLs) for drought tolerance, scientists have used marker-assisted selection during drought stress. Therefore, instead of conventional techniques of breeding, the breeding approach utilizing markers seems to be a promising alternative [5]. The role of significant phytohormones including abscisic acid, ethylene, brassinosteroids (BRs), and their transcription factors, are being explored for their effect of improving the efficacy of abiotic stress tolerance in various species of crops. A dire threat to food security around the world is water scarcity and to cope up with drought stress, the transgenics approach seems promising. For example, one of the 13 Flowering Locus T-Like (FTL) genes, OsFTL10, is known to be induced by drought stress. It is shown that its overexpression in rice improves drought resistance [6]. Nutrient deficiency is a common problem in soil and to alleviate that we use chemical fertilizers, especially urea that degrades the environment. A novel transcription factor from rice, nitrogen-mediated tiller growth response 5, improves nitrogen use efficiency if overexpressed in wild-type rice [7]. The widely used genome editing tool CRISPR/Cas9 has revolutionized the research. This technology is used to modify the target genes in crop plants, which are important regulators during abiotic stress, for example, it is shown that CRISPR/Cas9-induced modifications in rice genes OsBADH2, OsMPK, and Os02g23823 that play an instrumental role in many pathways related to abiotic stress in rice [8]. This novel technique can further help to generate new varieties with novel stress-tolerant traits. This chapter will highlight the advancements in crop productivity due to modern ground-breaking techniques that aim to make cereal crops stress tolerant. Such advances could promote agricultural sustainability and ensure food security globally.

1.2 MECHANISMS IN PLANTS FOR COMBATING ABIOTIC STRESS

Abiotic stresses overall reduce the growth of plant and survival. The gross biomass due to stress conditions is also observed to be decreased [9]. Although, different stresses have different effects; however, the overall damage often has similar changes under different stress at physical, cellular, and molecular levels. For example, when a plant encounters stress, the first line of defense comes from the outermost barrier, which is a cell wall that shows resistance because of its higher resilience [10]. After the physical barrier, come the internal physiological, cellular, and molecular changes that are activated under stress, including changes in the osmoticum, ionic balance, ROS balance, various transporters, and channels are expressed. Various physiological processes such as photosynthesis, respiration, and propagation are also suppressed under stress. The reduced uptake of water and CO₂ availability under stress is also decreased. This eventually causes lower photosynthetic and transpiration efficiency thereby lowering the stomatal conductance. At the molecular level, various phytohormones and their signaling cascades begin under stress and their regulatory genes and targets are activated for combating stress [11]. Signaling molecules such as secondary messengers, accumulation ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Contributors
• Abbreviations
• Preface
• 1. Innovations in Crop Production: An Amalgamation of Abiotic Stress Physiology and Technology
• 2. Redox Homeostasis Managers in Plants under Environmental Stresses
• 3. Reactive Oxygen and Nitrogen Species: Oxidative Damage and Antioxidative Defense Mechanism in Plants under Abiotic Stress
• 4. Physiological Mechanisms of Plants Involved in Phosphorus Nutrition and Deficiency Management
• 5. Responses and Adaptation of Photosynthesis and Respiration under Challenging Environments
• 6. Forward and Reverse Genetic Approaches for Improving Abiotic Stress Tolerance in Crop Plants
• 7. Salinity-Induced Changes on Different Physiological and Biochemical Features of Plants
• 8. Next-Generation Climate-Resilient Agricultural Technology in Traditional Farming for Food and Nutritional Safety in the Modern Era of Climate Change
• 9. CRISPR/Cas-Mediated Genome Editing Technologies in Plants
• 10. Use of Ornamental Plants for the Phytoremediation of Metal-Contaminated Soils
• 11. Role of Electromagnetic Radiation in Abiotic Stress Tolerance
• Index