Climate Change and Its Adverse Impacts on Plant Growth in South Asia: Current Status and Upcoming Challenges

Abstract

Socioeconomic development, adaptive capacity of the population, and demographic conditions across the states of South Asia make it more vulnerable to climate change. South Asia is daily going to be more vulnerable to climate change and climatic variability. This region is facing multiple challenges in terms of climate change, dilapidation of ecosystems, and food insecurity. Climate is the primary determining factor for agricultural output, which unswervingly influences food production across the globe. South Asia is mainly an agricultural foundation based region and thus the economy of these regions directly depends on agriculture and agricultural production. Due to the extensive dependence on natural assets for thriving, it makes the people of this region more vulnerable to climate change. This region is now under serious risk from sea-level rising and growing incidences of extreme events such as flash floods, enhanced temperature, drought, salinity, cyclones, storms, landslides, and irregularity of precipitation. These abiotic stresses continuously disturb plant growth and productivity. It is now the time to take urgent action on these issues towards a sustainable, inclusive and resource efficient way to overcome this. In this review, we summarize the overall situation of climate change in the South Asian countries and their adverse consequences on plants, and upcoming challenges towards a sustainable production.