Abiotic stress in plants

Abstract

It gives me great pleasure to be a guest editor for this special issue of Physiologia Plantarum – one of the premier journals in our field. I have been given this honor by virtue of my association with The Southern Section of the American Society of Plant Biologists (nee, Plant Physiologists) as an executive officer and past Chair. In this capacity I had the privilege of inviting three eminent scientists in the field of Plant Stress Biology to present an overview of their own research programs and their latest efforts in understanding how plants respond to and tolerate stressful environments. The scientists I chose are leaders in three of the most exciting and active areas in abiotic stress plant biology and are; Dr Michael Thomashow (Michigan State University) presenting his work in the area of chilling tolerance mechanisms highlighted by his latest discoveries in the control of COR gene expression, Dr John Burke (USDA-ARS, Lubbock) presenting his work on thermotolerance mutants of Arabidopsis featuring a mutant that directly links a deficiency in thermotolerance to a loss of a small molecular weight heat shock protein, and Dr Jian-Kang Zhu (University of Arizona) presenting his work on the genetics of salt tolerance in Arabidopsis that for the first time provide a sound genetic basis for inclusion of various components in the abiotic stress signaling pathways in plants. These presentations were to be delivered at the annual meeting of the Southern Section of ASPB in Baton Rouge in March of 1999 and were the crowning highlight of our gathering. Each speaker was asked to discuss their research in a way that would provide an insight into how the scientific process worked to achieve advances in our understanding of complex biological processes in plants. This approach to the presentations was taken, not only to bring our members up to date with the latest developments in the labs of established leaders in this area, but also to provide our students with exposure to scientific advancements on a more personal level. Following the annual meeting, in consultation with Dr Per Gardeström, the Editor-in-Chief of Physiologia Plantarum, I managed to persuade each of the three speakers to prepare manuscripts based on their talks, with the added proviso that they put their own work into context with the field (but not as a general review but to retain a more personal narrative). These manuscripts were peer reviewed and are now proudly presented in this issue. I would like to extend my appreciation and that of the Southern Section to each of the authors and to Physiologia Plantarum for allowing us to showcase their presentations and our society in such a unique and prestigious manner.