Abiotic stress tolerance and sustainable agriculture: A functional genomics perspective

Abstract

Crop growth and productivity is being seriously constrained by a range of abiotic stress factors all over the globe. Literature revealed that abiotic stress factors [temperature extremes (heat and cold), water extremes (drought and fl ooding), salinity, sodicity, wounding, metal/metalloid toxicity, excess light, radiations, high speed wind, nutrient loss, and anaerobic conditions] are the key reason for declining the usual yield of major crop plants by more than 50 %, which causes signifi cant economic losses every year. A number of genes and their products respond to abiotic stress factors at transcriptional and translational level; therefore, genetic engineering for abiotic stress resistance is an important goal for protecting/improving agricultural crop productivity. Adaptation of plants to various environmental insults is reliant upon the establishment of cascades of molecular networks involved in stress perception, signal transduction, and the expression of stress-specifi c genes and metabolites. Thus, engineering stress-responsive genes which can protect and/or preserve the function may be a potential target to enhance stress tolerance in plants. Genetic engineering and DNA markers have now emerged as important gear in crop improvement.