Abiotic Stress Responses in Plants: Current Knowledge and Future Prospects

Abstract

Exposure to abiotic stresses has become a major threatening factor that hurdles the sustainable growth in agriculture for fulfilling the growing food demand world- wide. A significant decrease in the production of major food crops including wheat, rice, and maize is predicted in the near future due to the combined effect of abiotic stresses and climate change that will hamper global food security. Thus, desperate efforts are necessary to develop abiotic stress-resilient crops with improved agro- nomic traits. For this, detailed knowledge of the underlying mechanisms respon- sible for abiotic stress adaptation in plants is must required. Plants being sessile organisms respond to different stresses through complex and diverse responses that are integrated on various whole plants, cellular, and molecular levels. The advanced genetic and molecular tools have uncovered these complex stress adaptive processes and have provided critical inputs on their regulation. The present chapter focuses on understanding the different responses of the plants involved in abiotic stress adaptation and strategies employed to date for achieving stress resistance in plants.