Chapter 3 - Engineering Signaling Molecules to Improve Abiotic Stress Tolerance in Crop Plants

Abstract

Plants adapt to a wide range of environments through a sophisticated and efficient signal transduction mechanism by modulating regulatory and functional genes. Crop species exhibit genotypic variation for abiotic stress tolerance and as a result quality and productivity of agriculture crops are drastically affected. To meet the global population demand there is a need for development of stress tolerant crops with improved quality. Since abiotic stress is a multigenic trait the classical breeding approach fails to develop stress tolerance traits, thus the transgenic approach is being successfully applied to produce stress tolerant crops. Unraveling the abiotic stress signal sensing and transduction molecules augments our capability to improve stress tolerant crops to attain sustainable agriculture development. In this chapter, we mainly focused on abiotic stress-induced signaling molecules and discussed recent progress of engineering signaling molecules of the abiotic stress signaling pathway and their possible role in abiotic stress tolerance.