Stress Tolerance In Horticultural Crops

Stress Tolerance in Horticultural Crops: Challenges and Mitigation Strategies explores concepts, strategies and recent advancements in the area of abiotic stress tolerance in horticultural crops, highlighting the latest advances in molecular breeding, genome sequencing and functional genomics approaches. Further sections present specific insights on different aspects of abiotic stress tolerance from classical breeding, hybrid breeding, speed breeding, epigenetics, gene/quantitative trait loci (QTL) mapping, transgenics, physiological and biochemical approaches to OMICS approaches, including functional genomics, proteomics and genomics assisted breeding. Due to constantly changing environmental conditions, abiotic stress such as high temperature, salinity and drought are being understood as an imminent threat to horticultural crops, including their detrimental effects on plant growth, development, reproduction, and ultimately, on yield. This book offers a comprehensive resource on new developments that is ideal for anyone working in the field of abiotic stress management in horticultural crops, including researchers, students and educators. Describes advances in whole genome and next generation sequencing approaches for breeding climate smart horticultural crops Details advanced germplasm tolerance to abiotic stresses screened in the recent past and their performance Includes advancements in OMICS approaches in horticultural crops

This book presents various aspects of salt and drought stress signaling in crops, combining physiological, biochemical, and molecular studies. Salt and drought stress are two major constraints on crop production worldwide. Plants possess several mechanisms to cope with the adverse effects of salt and drought. Among these mechanisms, stress signaling is very important, because it integrates and regulates nuclear gene expression and other cellular activities, which can help to restore cellular homeostasis. Accordingly, understanding the signaling cascades will help plant biologists to grasp the tolerance mechanisms that allow breeders to develop tolerant crop varieties. This book is an essential resource for researchers and graduate students working on salt and drought stress physiology and plant breeding.

Priming-Mediated Stress and Cross-Stress Tolerance in Crop Plants provides the latest, in-depth understanding of the molecular mechanisms associated with the development of stress and cross-stress tolerance in plants. Plants growing under field conditions are constantly exposed, either sequentially or simultaneously, to many abiotic or biotic stress factors. As a result, many plants have developed unique strategies to respond to ever-changing environmental conditions, enabling them to monitor their surroundings and adjust their metabolic systems to maintain homeostasis. Recently, priming mediated stress and cross-stress tolerance (i.e., greater tolerance to a second, stronger stress after exposure to a different, milder primary stress) have attracted considerable interest within the scientific community as potential means of stress management and for producing stress-resistant crops to aid global food security. Priming-Mediated Stress and Cross-Stress Tolerance in Crop Plants comprehensively reviews the physiological, biochemical, and molecular basis of cross-tolerance phenomena, allowing researchers to develop strategies to enhance crop productivity under stressful conditions and to utilize natural resources more efficiently. The book is a valuable asset for plant and agricultural scientists in corporate or government environments, as well as educators and advanced students looking to promote future research into plant stress tolerance. Provides comprehensive information for developing multiple stress-tolerant crop varieties Includes in-depth physiological, biochemical, and molecular information associated with cross-tolerance Includes contribution from world-leading cross-tolerance research group Presents color images and diagrams for effective communication of key concepts

This book brings together recent advances in the area of abiotic stress tolerance in various vegetables, fruit crops, plantation crops and tuber crops. The main challenges to improving the productivity of horticultural crops are the different types of abiotic stresses generally caused by climate change at the regional and global level. Heat, drought, cold and salinity are the major abiotic stresses that adversely affect growth and productivity and can trigger a series of morphological, physiological, biochemical and molecular changes in various horticultural crops. To date, there are no books covering horticultural crop-specific abiotic stress tolerance mechanisms and their management. Addressing that gap, the book is divided into 2 sections, the first of which highlights recent advances in the general aspects of abiotic stress tolerance like the role of hormones, reactive oxygen species, seed treatments, molecular mechanisms of heat tolerance and heavy metal toxicity, while the second focuses on the abiotic stress tolerance mechanisms of various vegetables, fruit crops, plantation crops and tuber crops. It includes comprehensive discussions of fruit crops like mango, grapes, banana, litchi and arid zone fruits; vegetables crops like tomato, capsicum, onion and tuber crops; and plantation crops like coconut, areca nut, oil palm and black pepper. Among the strategies for plant stress survival, examples of both avoidance and tolerance relevant to particular crops are examined in detail, supported by selected comprehensive case studies of progress. As such, the book offers a valuable resource suited for scientists and graduate students working in the fields of crop improvement, genetic engineering, and the abiotic stress tolerance of horticultural crops.

This book reviews the potential mechanisms in arbuscular mycorrhizas (AMs), in the hope that this can help arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) to be more used efficiently as a biostimulant to enhance stress tolerance in the host plants. AMF, as well as plants, are often exposed to all or many of the abiotic and biotic stresses, including extreme temperatures, pH, drought, water-logging, toxic metals and soil pathogens. Studies have indicated a quick response to these stresses involving several mechanisms, such as root morphological modification, reactive oxygen species change, osmotic adjustment, direct absorption of water by extraradical hyphae, up-regulated expression of relevant stressed genes, glomalin-related soil protein release, etc. The underlying complex, multi-dimensional strategy is involved in morphological, physiological, biochemical, and molecular processes. The AMF responses are often associated with homeostatic regulation of the internal and external environment, and are therefore critical for plant health, survival and restoration in native ecosystems and good soil structure.

Plants are sessile and prone to multiple stresses in the changing environmental conditions. Of the several strategies adopted by plants to counteract the adverse effects of abiotic stress, phytohormones provide signals to allow plants to survive under stress conditions. They are one of the key systems integrating metabolic and developmental events in the whole plant and the response of plants to external factors and are essential for many processes throughout the life of a plant and influence the yield and quality of crops. The book ‘Phytohormones and Abiotic Stress Tolerance in Plants’ summarizes the current body of knowledge on crosstalk between plant stresses under the influence of phytohormones, and provides state-of-the-art knowledge of recent developments in understanding the role of phytohormones and abiotic stress tolerance in plants. This book presents information on how modulation in phytohormone levels affect regulation of biochemical and molecular mechanisms.

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.

Abiotic stress adversely affects crop production worldwide, decreasing average yields for most of the crops to 50%. Among various abiotic stresses affecting agricultural production, drought stress is considered to be the main source of yield reduction around the globe. Due to an increasing world population, drought stress will lead to a serious food shortage by 2050. The situation may become worse due to predicated global climate change that may multiply the frequency and duration and severity of such abiotic stresses. Hence, there is an urgent need to improve our understanding on complex mechanisms of drought stress tolerance and to develop modern varieties that are more resilient to drought stress. Identification of the potential novel genes responsible for drought tolerance in crop plants will contribute to understanding the molecular mechanism of crop responses to drought stress. The discovery of novel genes, the analysis of their expression patterns in response to drought stress, and the determination of their potential functions in drought stress adaptation will provide the basis of effective engineering strategies to enhance crop drought stress tolerance. Although the in-depth water stress tolerance mechanisms is still unclear, it can be to some extent explained on the basis of ion homeostasis mediated by stress adaptation effectors, toxic radical scavenging, osmolyte biosynthesis, water transport, and long distance signaling response coordination. Importantly, complete elucidation of the physiological, biochemical, and molecular mechanisms for drought stress, perception, transduction, and tolerance is still a challenge to the plant biologists. The findings presented in volume 1 call attention to the physiological and biochemical modalities of drought stress that influence crop productivity, whereas volume 2 summarizes our current understanding on the molecular and genetic mechanisms of drought stress resistance in plants.