CRC Press Improving Abiotic Stress Tolerance in Plants

Abiotic stresses such as drought, flooding, high or low temperatures, metal toxicity and salinity can hamper plant growth and development. Improving Abiotic Stress Tolerance in Plants explains the physiological and molecular mechanisms plants naturally exhibit to withstand abiotic stresses and outlines the potential approaches to enhance plant abiotic stress tolerance to extreme conditions. Synthesising developments in plant stress biology, the book offers strategies that can be used in breeding, genomic, molecular, physiological and biotechnological approaches that hold the potential to develop resilient plants and improve crop productivity worldwide.   Features ·       Comprehensively explains molecular and physiological mechanism of multiple abiotic stress tolerance in plants ·       Discusses recent advancements in crop abiotic stress tolerance mechanism and highlights strategies to develop abiotic stress tolerant genotypes for sustainability ·       Stimulates synthesis of information for plant stress biology for biotechnological applications ·       Presents essential information for large scale breeding and agricultural biotechnological programs for crop improvement   Written by a team of expert scientists, this book benefits researchers in the field of plant stress biology and is essential reading for graduate students and researchers generating stress tolerant crops through genetic engineering and plant breeding. It appeals to individuals developing sustainable agriculture through physiological and biotechnological applications. About the Author Dr. M. Iqbal R. Khan is an Assistant Professor of Botany at Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi, India. His current research interests are elucidation physiological and molecular mechanisms associated with abiotic stress tolerance and looking for suitable QTLs/genes/metabolites and/or germplasm for developing breeding or gene editing pipelines. Working on the metabolism of plants under different abiotic stresses, Dr. Khan has found a significant role of phytohormones in the regulation of plant growth and development and have suggested that phytohormones play an important in controlling stress responses and interacts in coordination with each other for defense signal networking to fine tune tolerance mechanisms. He is also exploring the regulatory role of signalling molecules and their impact on nutrient homeostasis and source-sink relationship under abiotic stresses. Dr. Khan has published more than 45 journal articles, 07 book chapters and has edited four books (including this). He has been recognized as Young Scientist of the Year from Indian Society of Plant Physiology and Scientific and Environmental Research Institute, India and Junior Scientist of the Year from National Environmental Science Academy New Delhi, India. He has been guest editor of “Ethylene: A key regulatory molecule in plants" in Frontiers in Plant Science and currently editing a special issue in Frontiers in Plant Science on “Plant Responses to the Dark Scenario”. Dr. Amarjeet Singh is a scientist and member of faculty at the National Institute of Plant Genome Research (NIPGR), New Delhi, India. He has undertaken several genomics and functional genomics studies to identify, understand the differential expression pattern at the whole genome level and functionally characterized crucial genes in rice and Arabidopsis. At NIPGR, his research group is interested in deciphering the signaling networks and molecular mechanism of abiotic stresses (drought, salinity, cold) tolerance, particularly those regulated by calcium and lipid signaling, in crop plants. Another major research focus of the group is to understand the molecular mechanism of nutrient (NPK) uptake, transport and homeostasis in crucial crop plants such as rice and chickpea. He has published about 20 research/review articles in highly reputed, peer-reviewed international journals. He has also published three book chapters in books by n