Effect of Epigenomics on different stresses of Horticultural crops

Abstract

Horticultural Crops are affected by many environmental stresses including both biotic as well as abiotic. However, eventually, these are facing major challenges to enhance the productivity of field crops due to changes in environmental conditions. In order to cope with the fickle environments, plants are innately evolved with intricate gene signalling cascades and stress avoidance mechanisms. Epigenetic modifications are one such regulation which influences the plant stress responses under adverse environments. These epigenetic changes include the potential DNA methylation, histone modification and small RNAs coupled with the regulation of gene expression without altering the DNA sequences which eventually enhances the tolerance adoptive responses to the adverse environments. The epigenetic modifications in the genome develop a stress memory in plants which further enables them to better combat with extreme stress conditions. In this review, we attempted to recapitulate the recent progress and emphasize how the changes of DNA methylation, histone modification, and small non-coding RNA regulation alters in different growth stages of plants in response to major abiotic stresses such as salinity, drought, cold and heat. We also discuss the importance and prospects of epigenomics towards the possible improvement of plant responses to abiotic stresses for Climate resilient agriculture.