About this Research Topic

Background

Drought and salinity are two of the foremost environmental factors which restrict plant growth and yield in several regions of the world, especially in arid and semi‐arid regions. Due to global climate change, drought and salinity are predicted to become more widespread and eventually result in reduced plant growth and productivity in numerous plant species. Exposure of plants to extreme drought or salt stress ceases plant growth, while plants exposed to moderate stress generally show a slight change in their growth performance. Scientists are facing the challenging task of producing 70% more food to feed an additional 2.3 billion people by 2050. Therefore, it is imperative to develop stress-resilient crops with better yield under drought and salt stress to meet the food requirements of upcoming generations.

Drought and salinity have significant inhibitory impacts on cellular redox regulation with remodeled cell architecture. Salinity hampers plant growth in two phases; the first phase leads to plant growth suppression due to the osmotic effect of ions present in soil solution and the second phase leads to growth inhibition caused by ion toxicity due to the uptake and accumulation of specific ions. The first phase of salt stress is very similar to that of drought stress. However, growth under salinity is restricted primarily by osmotic stress. Thus, creating drought-resistant/tolerant species would produce plants well-suited to a saline environment. As salinity in its first phase of salt stress is much like that of drought stress, common responses to salinity and drought stresses are expected.

This Research Topic explores both the common and distinct responses of plants under salinity and drought, which modify plant growth and adaptation. Furthermore, it will seek to understand the biochemical, physiological, and genetic mechanisms which are critical for improving plant tolerance to these environmental stresses. In recent years, due to the advancement in ‘omics’ and breeding technologies, significant progress has been made in this direction but knowledge gaps still exist. The efforts in translating the knowledge gained through basic research should be expedited to achieve the desired outcomes of enhancing crop productivity and ensuring global food and nutritional security.

We will include contributions on themes such as:

• Mechanistic insights of plant responses to drought and salinity;
• Understanding of the ROS regulation under salinity and drought stress;
• Tools or resources for engineering drought- and salt-resistant crops;
• Plant breeding towards stress-tolerant crop varieties by developing molecular markers and high-throughput approaches;
• The role of signal transduction and signaling cascades in response to drought and salinity.
• The use of multi-omics approaches to provide insights into traits defining stress tolerance for the crop improvement;
• Physiological, molecular, and genetic mechanisms underlying adaptation of agronomically important crops to abiotic stresses;
• Functional validation and physiological insights of key genes and proteins involved in stress tolerance;
• Advancement in transcriptomic, metabolomic, proteomic, and genomic integrated breeding approaches for enhancing stress tolerance;
• The introduction of new breeding methods to accelerate the rate of genetic gain for sustainable agriculture while maintaining other core traits.

Keywords: drought stress, salinity stress, food security, stress tolerance, plant breeding, plant physiology, omics

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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