Chapter 19 - Signaling responses and their role in the mitigation of abiotic stresses

Abstract

Abiotic stresses are the substantial limiting factors that negatively impact the growth and development of plants. These abiotic-stress factors individually or in combination can lead to significant crop yield loss. Plants being sessile must confront complex abiotic-stress conditions such as salinity, drought, temperature extremes, and metals. To cope up with the adverse effect of the abiotic-stress factors, plants have evolved mechanisms through orchestrating tolerance potential by integrated signaling responses. Perception of stress signals and their transduction is a very vital step for turning on adaptive responses to protect plants under abiotic stress. During abiotic-stress signaling response, the expression of several key genes altered and plays a crucial role in the mitigation of abiotic stresses. Signaling components such as regulatory proteins, transcription factors (TFs), hormones, stress-responsive genes, and antioxidant enzymes form complex signaling and regulatory network to increase tolerance of plants to abiotic stress. Understanding signaling responses under stress conditions is of prime importance for developing stress-tolerant horticultural crops, which will be further helpful for achieving sustainable productivity in the agricultural sector. In the present chapter, we appraise the function of different signaling responses and their role in mitigating abiotic stresses in model plants and horticultural crops. Additionally, the central role of genetic engineering (GE) in the modulation of signaling response is discussed.