Photosynthetic Efficiency Under Multiple Stress Conditions Prospects For Increasing Crop Yields

A guide to environmental fluctuations that examines photosynthesis under both controlled and stressed conditions Photosynthesis, Productivity and Environmental Stress is a much-needed guide that explores the topics related to photosynthesis (both terrestrial and aquatic) and puts the focus on the basic effect of environmental fluctuations. The authors—noted experts on the topic—discuss photosynthesis under both controlled and stressed conditions and review new techniques for mitigating stressors including methods such as transgeneics, proteomics, genomics, ionomics, metabolomics, micromics, and more. In order to feed our burgeoning world population, it is vital that we must increase food production. Photosynthesis is directly related to plant growth and crop production and any fluctuation in the photosynthetic activity imposes great threat to crop productivity. Due to the environmental fluctuations plants are often exposed to the different environmental stresses that cause decreased photosynthetic rate and problems in the plant growth and development. This important book addresses this topic and: Covers topics related to terrestrial and aquatic photosynthesis Highlights the basic effect of environmental fluctuations Explores common stressors such as drought, salinity, alkalinity, temperature, UV-radiations, oxygen deficiency, and more Contains methods and techniques for improving photosynthetic efficiency for greater crop yield Written for biologists and environmentalists, Photosynthesis, Productivity and Environmental Stress offers an overview of the stressors affecting photosynthesis and includes possible solutions for improved crop production.

Increasing concerns of global climatic change have stimulated research in all aspects of carbon exchange. This has restored interest in leaf-photosynthetic models to predict and assess changes in photosynthetic CO2 assimilation in different environments. This is a comprehensive presentation of the most widely used models of steady-state photosynthesis by an author who is a world authority. Treatments of C3, C4 and intermediate pathways of photosynthesis in relation to environment have been updated to include work on antisense transgenic plants. It will be a standard reference for the formal analysis of photosynthetic metabolism in vivo by advanced students and researchers.

The photosynthetic fixation of carbon dioxide into organic compounds is mediated by the enzyme ribulose 1,S-bisphosphate (RuBP) carboxylase. The diversity of current research on this protein attests to its central role in biomass productivity, and suggests the importance of a timely and broadly based review. This Symposium was the first devoted exclusively to RuBP carboxylase and was attended by agronomists, plant physiologists, biochemists, molecular biologists, and crystallographers. Special efforts were made to involve young scientists in addition to established investigators. It is a pleasure to acknowledge financial support provided by the Department of Energy, the United States Department of Agricul ture, and the National Science Foundation, and the valued assistance of agency representatives, Drs. Joe Key, Robert Rabson, Elijah Romanoff, and Donald Senich. Thanks are due to Mrs. Margaret Dienes, without whose editorial skills this volume could not have been produced, and to Mrs. Helen Kondratuk as Symposium Coordinator. Finally, we wish to record our indebtedness to Dr. Alexander Hollaender for his tireless efforts in support of all aspects of this Symposium.

In the last 50 years, classical breeding has played a significant role in achieving higher crop productivity, but major crops have reached a plateau in their yield potential. Therefore, the current focus for sustainable intensification of agriculture is the use of biotechnological approaches to enhance the yield potential by combating the yield losses that occur due to abiotic stresses. The abiotic stresses are governed by multigenes, and therefore, a holistic approach is needed to get success in imparting stress tolerance to enhance the yield potential of our crops. Plants face multiple stress conditions during their life stages and adopt several physiological, biochemical, and molecular strategies to combat that, which are sometimes not sufficient to survive, particularly crop plants. The climate change era has created a need to understand the abiotic stresses in a holistic way. Therefore, a deep understanding of multiple abiotic stress mechanisms is necessary to develop crops tolerant to climate fluctuation. With this background, the outline of this book covers the following features: • Agriculture sustainability and molecular understanding of multiple stress tolerance • Systems biology for life-history strategies, conventional and genomic approaches above and underground • Genetic resources and molecular understanding of seed priming • Molecular signaling compounds, cell signal transduction, and crosstalk between plant growth hormones and regulators • Roles Transcription factors, LEA proteins, reactive oxygen species and alternative oxidase • Genome editing, metabolomics, and ‘omics’ technologies

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. By 2050, human population is expected to reach 9.7 billion. The demand for increased food production needs to be met from ever reducing resources of land, water and other environmental constraints. Rice remains the staple food source for a majority of the global populations, but especially in Asia where ninety percent of rice is grown and consumed. Climate change continues to impose abiotic and biotic stresses that curtail rice quality and yields. Researchers have been challenged to provide innovative solutions to maintain, or even increase, rice production. Amongst them, the ‘green super rice’ breeding strategy has been successful for leading the development and release of multiple abiotic and biotic stress tolerant rice varieties. Recent advances in plant molecular biology and biotechnologies have led to the identification of stress responsive genes and signaling pathways, which open up new paradigms to augment rice productivity. Accordingly, transcription factors, protein kinases and enzymes for generating protective metabolites and proteins all contribute to an intricate network of events that guard and maintain cellular integrity. In addition, various quantitative trait loci associated with elevated stress tolerance have been cloned, resulting in the detection of novel genes for biotic and abiotic stress resistance. Mechanistic understanding of the genetic basis of traits, such as N and P use, is allowing rice researchers to engineer nutrient-efficient rice varieties, which would result in higher yields with lower inputs. Likewise, the research in micronutrients biosynthesis opens doors to genetic engineering of metabolic pathways to enhance micronutrients production. With third generation sequencing techniques on the horizon, exciting progress can be expected to vastly improve molecular markers for gene-trait associations forecast with increasing accuracy. This book emphasizes on the areas of rice science that attempt to overcome the foremost limitations in rice production. Our intention is to highlight research advances in the fields of physiology, molecular breeding and genetics, with a special focus on increasing productivity, improving biotic and abiotic stress tolerance and nutritional quality of rice.

Climate Change and Crop Stress: Molecules to Ecosystems expounds on the transitional period where science has progressed to ‘post-genomics’ and the gene editing era, putting field performance of crops to the forefront and challenging the production of practical applicability vs. theoretical possibility. Researchers have concentrated efforts on the effects of environmental stress conditions such as drought, heat, salinity, cold, or pathogen infection which can have a devastating impact on plant growth and yield. Designed to deliver information to combat stress both in isolation and through simultaneous crop stresses, this edited compilation provides a comprehensive view on the challenges and impacts of simultaneous stresses. Presents a multidisciplinary view of crop stresses, empowering readers to quickly align their individual experience and perspective with the broader context Combines the mechanistic aspects of stresses with the strategic aspects Presents both abiotic and biotic stresses in a single volume

Response of Field Crops to Abiotic Stress: Current Status and Future Prospects is a collection of useful scientific resources for students, researchers, and academicians on diverse aspects of abiotic stress responses in field crops. The book provides its readers with a vivid understanding of abiotic stress responses in field crops by covering diverse aspects. It offers exhaustive explanations of the impact and responses of field crops to abiotic stresses. This book offers comprehensive coverage of: Climate change impact on field crops Arsenic and aluminium stress responses in field crops Drought, high temperature, and flooding stress responses in field crops Salinity and osmotic stress responses in field crops Heavy metal stress responses in field crops UV stress responses Elemental biofortification Reactive oxygen species (ROS) metabolism Nutraceutical and human health Computational modelling approaches for abiotic stresses in plants