Climate smart crops: Flood and drought-tolerant crops

Abstract

The increasing demands of world's population make it mandatory to increase food production. Global climate changes currently threaten this goal, through many adverse conditions, such as water stress by excess (waterlogging or flooding) or scarcity (drought). One alternative to overcome this challenge is the development of stress resilient crops, since an increase in the number of affected areas and the intensity of stress occurring in those, is happening as a consequence of climate changes. Molecular, physiological and epigenetic changes may be key to achieve tolerance to these stresses and are discussed in this chapter.