Plant Adaptation To Abiotic Stress From Signaling Pathways And Microbiomes To Molecular Mechanisms

The book “Plant Adaptation to Abiotic Stress: From Signaling Pathways and Microbiomes to Molecular Mechanisms” comprehensively examines abiotic stressors—cold, heat, light, salinity, and water scarcity—across its 18 chapters. Focusing particularly on Arabidopsis thaliana, it investigates abiotic stresses, adaptation strategies, and molecular pathways. Furthermore, it addresses broader issues, including climate challenges, food security, water scarcity, and agricultural concerns such as soil acidity and aluminum stress. It proposes adaptive measures for cultivating stress-resistant crops and sheds light on genetic modification methods such as CRISPR-Cas9, integrating nanotechnology in plant breeding. Emphasizing transcription factors, post-translational protein modifications, and diverse noncoding RNAs (long noncoding RNAs, circular RNAs, microRNAs, and small interfering RNAs), the book highlights their role in regulating gene expression during stress responses. It specifically underscores secondary messengers, plant hormones, and MAPK cascades within intracellular signaling pathways. Additionally, it discusses the roles of endophytic bacteria and microbial interactions in bolstering stress resilience. The book explores state-of-the-art research methodologies in plant breeding, omics approaches, and nanotechnology integration for developing stress-resistant crop varieties, advocating for agricultural sustainability. Tailored for plant physiology scientists, academics, and postgraduate students, it amalgamates diverse research findings, serving as a pivotal resource to comprehend intricate plant responses to environmental challenges.

The natural environment for plants is composed of a complex set of abiotic and biotic stresses; plant responses to these stresses are equally complex. Systems biology allows us to identify regulatory hubs in complex networks. It also examines the molecular “parts” (transcripts, proteins and metabolites) of an organism and attempts to combine them into functional networks or models that effectively describe and predict the dynamic activities of that organism in different environments. This book focuses on research advances regarding plant responses to abiotic stresses, from the physiological level to the molecular level. It highlights new insights gained from the integration of omics datasets and identifies remaining gaps in our knowledge, outlining additional focus areas for future crop improvement research. Plants have evolved a wide range of mechanisms for coping with various abiotic stresses. In many crop plants, the molecular mechanisms involved in a single type of stress tolerance have since been identified; however, in order to arrive at a holistic understanding of major and common events concerning abiotic stresses, the signaling pathways involved must also be elucidated. To date several molecules, like transcription factors and kinases, have been identified as promising candidates that are involved in crosstalk between stress signalling pathways. However, there is a need to better understand the tolerance mechanisms for different abiotic stresses by thoroughly grasping the signalling and sensing mechanisms involved. Accordingly, this book covers a range of topics, including the impacts of different abiotic stresses on plants, the molecular mechanisms leading to tolerance for different abiotic stresses, signaling cascades revealing cross-talk among various abiotic stresses, and elucidation of major candidate molecules that may provide abiotic stress tolerance in plants.

Microbial Management of Plant Stresses: Current Trends, Application and Challenges explores plant microbiota including isolated microbial communities that have been used to study the functional capacities, ecological structure and dynamics of the plant-microbe interaction with focus on agricultural crops. Presenting multiple examples and evidence of the potential genetic flexibility of microbial systems to counteract the climate induced stresses associated with their host as a part of indigenous system, this book presents strategies and approaches for improvement of microbiome. As climate changes have altered the global carbon cycling and ecological dynamics, the regular and periodic occurrences of severe salinity, drought, and heat stresses across the different regimes of the agro-ecological zones have put additional constraints on agricultural ecosystem to produce efficient foods and other derived products for rapidly growing world population through low cost and sustainable technology. Furthermore chemical amendments, agricultural inputs and other innovative technologies although may have fast results with fruitful effects for enhancing crop productivity but also have other ecological drawbacks and environmental issues and offer limited use opportunities. Microbial formulations and/or microbial consortia deploying two or multiple partners have been frequently used for mitigation of various stresses, however, field success is often variable and improvement Smart, knowledge-driven selection of microorganisms is needed as well as the use of suitable delivery approaches and formulations. Microbial Management of Plant Stresses: Current Trends, Application and Challenges presents the functional potential of plant microbiota to address current challenges in crop production addressing this urgent need to bring microbial innovations into practice. Demonstrates microbial ecosystems as an indigenous system for improving plant growth, health and stress resilience Covers all the novel aspects of microbial regulatory mechanism. Key challenges associated with microbial delivery and successful establishment for plant growth promotion and stress avoidance Explores plant microbiome and the modulation of plant defense and ecological dynamics under stressed environment

Plant responses to environmental stress are governed by complex molecular and biochemical signal transduction processes, which act in coordination to determine tolerance or sensitivity at the whole plant level. Upon exposure to abiotic stress, plants express a sophisticated coordinated response to reprogram interconnected defense networks and metabolic pathways, by alterations in the transcription, translation, and post-translational modification of defense-related genes and proteins. Traditionally, physiological and phenotypic responses were the major ones to be collected in plant stress biology. However, modern studies include the identification of key genes that influence stress tolerance and plant growth under the imposing stress and the verification of gene functions using knock out mutants or overexpression lines. In addition, genomics has become a necessary tool for the understanding of plant stress responses at the whole genome levels. The identification of stress-tolerant plant resources and the investigation of the functional role of the genetic variants is also a valuable tool in this research field. Recently, the advent of CRISPR/Cas genome editing technology, enables these variations to be introduced in crops for improved stress tolerance traits. Through the understanding of the molecular mechanisms involved in plant signaling in response to abiotic stress and crop performance characters under stress conditions, we hope to open new ways for the breeding of superior crops.

Adverse environmental factors can impose stress on plants and influence the expression of the full genetic potential for growth and reproduction. The capability of plants to develop plastic response reactions, to adapt to environmental stress situations, is unique in the biological world. A goal of the research described in this volume is to increase crop productivity, particular in regions where the environment imposes stress. An understanding of the principles involved in plant adaptation to environmental stress will enable optimisation of practices to improve agronomic production and minimise damaging environmental impact. The aim of this volume is to link the rapidly advancing and increasingly specialist field of molecular biology with plant physiology at the ecosystem level. The book includes chapters focused on some principle methods and a series of up-to-date review chapters on plant adaptation to a variety of specific stresses. The utilisation of newly available genome information is emphasised. Of particular importance is the desire to highlight the current potential of such approaches, and how diverse disciplines can interact and complement one another. The book is aimed at both the specialist and the advanced student.

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.

Understanding abiotic stress responses in plants is critical for the development of new varieties of crops, which are better adapted to harsh climate conditions. The new book by the well-known editor team Narendra Tuteja and Sarvajeet Gill provides a comprehensive overview on the molecular basis of plant responses to external stress like drought or heavy metals, to aid in the engineering of stress resistant crops. After a general introduction into the topic, the following sections deal with specific signaling pathways mediating plant stress response. The last part covers translational plant physiology, describing several examples of the development of more stress-resistant crop varieties.