Chapter 19 - Cross-tolerance to abiotic stress at different levels of organizations: Prospects for scaling-up from laboratory to field

Abstract

Results of studies on the response of plants to adverse growth conditions are used to understand restrictions to crop yield. However, this extrapolation requires certain experimental considerations that are rarely taken into account in the experimental designs. This chapter analyzes several hurdles and limitations of the experimental approaches commonly used to study plant stress tolerance. It is very common that basic studies under controlled (plants in pots growing in chambers such as phytotrons) or semi controlled (e.g., plants growing in a greenhouse) conditions attempt to extrapolate their results to crops grown in the field under more realistic conditions. Thus, the objective of this chapter is to analyze if this scaling up is possible, and in which situations. We analyze the scientific literature in this research field (mainly, but not restricted to, water stress), trying to elucidate the various limitations in this scaling up from molecular, physiological, biochemical, and agronomic studies.