Abiotic Stress Tolerance Enhancement in Crop Plants Under the Current Climate Change Scenario

About this Research Topic

Background

Abiotic stress includes drought, heat, salinity, and heavy metal stress. Drought and heat reduce crop productivity and weaken global food security, especially given the current and growing impacts of climate change.

Salinity can create a mix of complex interactions that affect plant nutrient uptake, metabolism, and susceptibility to biotic stresses. Heavy metal contamination of soil and water causing toxicity or stress is an important constraint of crop quality and productivity. Increasing population growth and food demand only aggravate the situation. It has been reported in several studies that counterbalancing heavy metal toxicity requires complex mechanisms at the molecular, biochemical, physiological, cellular, tissue, and whole plant level. These complex mechanisms may manifest in terms of improved crop productivity. Recent advances in various disciplines of biological sciences such as metabolomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, etc., have assisted in the characterization of metabolites, transcription factors, and stress-inducible proteins involved in heavy metal stress tolerance, which can be utilized for generating heavy metal stress-tolerant crops. Furthermore, advances in biotechnology, including progress in genomics and information technology, may mitigate the detrimental effects of heat drought and salinity through the use of agronomic management practices and the development of crop varieties with increased productivity under abiotic stress.

Abiotic stress can reduce crop yield, lowering both the food supply and income for farmers. Abiotic stress negatively affects plant morphological, physiological, and biochemical processes. The result is a decrease in photosynthesis, impaired cell elongation and division, and reduced cell turgor pressure. Drought and salinity stress inhibits nutrient uptake and affects the gene expression, yield, and quality of crop plants. Global climate change is expected to increase the occurrence and severity of drought episodes due to increasing temperatures and evapotranspiration. Therefore, food security in the twenty-first century will increasingly depend on the release of new cultivars with improved adaptation to drought, heat and salinity conditions. However, selection for drought tolerance is difficult due to a complex genotype and environmental interactions. Recent progress in genomics makes possible a more efficient assessment and enhanced diversity in germplasm collections, introgression of valuable traits from new sources and identification of the genes that control key traits. Interestingly the use of microbes as an alternate technology for improving metal tolerance of plants is recently gaining momentum. The use of these beneficial microorganisms is considered as one of the most promising methods for safe crop-management practices.

This Research Topic focuses on recent developments and future prospects of obtaining a better understanding of the regulation of abiotic stress tolerance enhancement in major crop species cultivated around the globe. This topic will cover all aspects of abiotic stress in crop plants, providing up-to-date and in-depth scientific knowledge on agronomic, biochemical, physiological, genetic, metabolomic and molecular research for increasing abiotic stress tolerance.

We welcome all article types that include the following:

1. Advance strategies for improving abiotic stress tolerance in crop plants
2. Role of fertilizers to enhance plant adaptation under abiotic stress
3. Plant abiotic stress response and nutrient use efficiency
4. Novel plant breeding techniques for improving abiotic stress tolerance in crop plants
5. Role of plant growth regulators in abiotic stress tolerance in plants
6. Metabolomics and molecular strategies to enhance drought and heat tolerance in crop plants
7. Nitrogen fertility and abiotic stress management in crop plants
8. Role of microorganisms in alleviating abiotic stress in crop plants
9. Remote sensing of biotic stress in crop plants and its applications for pest management

Keywords: salinity, heavy metal toxicity, abiotic stress, biotechnology, climate change

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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