Chapter 4 - NAC transcription factor family in rice: Recent advancements in the development of stress-tolerant rice

Abstract

Agriculture as the basis of human life provides food in the form of cereals, pulses, vegetables, and fruits, but is confronting major concern of feeding increasing world population estimated to reach 9 billion by 2050 for which agricultural production or major crops needs to be increased by 1.1%–1.3% per year. Rice is the most important cereal for more than half of the world population. Abiotic stress not only affects rice grain yield but also grain quality. Grain quality of rice is strongly associated with strong social, cultural, and economic impact among the rice-eating population. In response to abiotic stress, plants modify the expression pattern of the genes or transcription factors (TFs) to alter the various signaling pathways and regulatory networks helping plant to fight abiotic stress. The NAC TFs is one of the largest families of TFs in plants and play an important role in the regulation of transcriptional reprogramming associated with various biotic and abiotic stress responses. In rice, 151 NAC TFs genes have been identified. However, only few of them are functionally characterized for their role in abiotic stress tolerance. Different transgenic studies revealed that overexpression of single NAC gene plays a significant role in more than one stress factors, and their protein products may interact with several different processes as an inducer and repressor. Therefore, this chapter summarizes the NAC transcription factor family in rice and its diverse role during abiotic stress. This chapter also includes some of the advancements in the development of transcriptional regulatory mechanism of NAC TFs in abiotic stress tolerance.