Abstract
In recent years, climate change has altered many ecosystems due to a combination of frequent droughts, irregular precipitation, increasingly salinized areas and high temperatures. These environmental changes have also caused a decline in crop yield worldwide. Therefore, there is an urgent need to fully understand the plant responses to abiotic stress and to apply the acquired knowledge to improve stress tolerance in crop plants. The accumulation of polyamines (PAs) in response to many abiotic stresses is one of the most remarkable plant metabolic responses. In this review, we provide an update about the most significant achievements improving plant tolerance to drought, salinity, low and high temperature stresses by exogenous application of PAs or genetic manipulation of endogenous PA levels. We also provide some clues about possible mechanisms underlying PA functions, as well as known cross-talks with other stress signaling pathways. Finally, we discuss about the possible use of PAs for seed priming to induce abiotic stress tolerance in agricultural valuable crop plants.
Highlights
The ever-increasing human population, together with the loss of agricultural land as well as the diminishing availability of resources, poses serious challenges to the world agriculture
These events are important for Europe, since four out of the five worldwide extreme heat wave events that have occurred within the last 15 years were observed in European regions [4]
Another example was noted in Damask rose in which foliar applications of Spm or Spd (0.5 mM) improved relative water and chlorophyll contents, as well as stomatal conductance in plants subjected to water stress
Summary
The ever-increasing human population, together with the loss of agricultural land (due to urbanization, industrialization, desertification and climatic changes) as well as the diminishing availability of resources, poses serious challenges to the world agriculture. PA levels are oneinofabiotic the most remarkable have been hallmarks identified.inAmong are to genes controlling the synthesis metabolites like metabolic plants them exposed abiotic stress conditions such of asprotective drought, salinity, chilling, osmolytes and [10]. Elevated levels are one of the most remarkable metabolic hallmarks heat, hypoxia, ozone, UV, heavy metals and herbicides These changes are mainly produced by in plants exposed to abiotic stress conditions suchwith as drought, salinity, chilling, heat, hypoxia, ozone, alterations in PA metabolism and/or interactions other metabolic and/or signaling pathways in UV, heavy metals and herbicides. These changes are mainly produced by alterations in metabolism response to stress [10,11,12]. Polyamine accumulation triggers several molecular, biochemical and physiological accumulation triggers several molecular, biochemical and physiological responses responses thatstress promote stress tolerance, increasing that promote tolerance, increasing crop yield. crop yield
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