Special Issue on Sustainable Agriculture under Abiotic and Biotic Stress

Abstract

World poverty and hunger are closely related toenvironmental degradation, caused by increasingpopulation pressure and urban expansions, soilerosion, limitation of water resources, gaseouspollution, and massive industrialization.Furthermore, climate changes and extreme weatherpatterns pose new challenges for crop productionand food security. Sustainable agriculture for theproduction of food and fiber, usingenvironmentally-conscious farming practices basedon understanding plant ecological interactions, iscrucial for the preservation of natural resources forfuture generations.This special issue focuses on recent researchprogress on understanding plant interaction withabiotic and biotic stress factors for sustainableagriculture. Plant stresses inflected by salinity,drought, floods, temperature extremes, radiation,and toxic substances deposited in the soil togetherwith diseases and insects attacks, are the majorlimitations of crop cultivation incurring substantialreduction in yield and hence elevate economiclosses to the farmers.Sustainable agriculture is challenged by thelosses in crop genetic diversity. Conservation ofavailable germplasm and the efficient utilization ofgenetic resources are important aspects of currentresearch. In this special issue, Yumurtaci (2015)reviewed the utilization of wild relatives for thedevelopment of abiotic and biotic stress tolerantnew varieties of four major food crops includingwheat, barley, maize and oat.Modern advances in biotechnology offerinnovative approaches for understanding thefundamental mechanisms of abiotic and bioticstress and the development of stress tolerant crops.On this topic, Bakhsh (2015) reviewed currentresearch achievements towards the development ofabiotic stress tolerant crops through geneticengineering. In addition, Ram and Sharma (2015)studied the molecular characterization of TaPase inwheat, a gene known to be involved in plantresponse to stress.Plant diseases represent another major challengefor sustainable agriculture. To illustrate theimportance of integrating genetic engineering in thestrategies to combat plant diseases, Elayabalan etal. (2015) reviewed relevant advances in thedevelopment of banana plants resistant to thebanana bunchy top disease.Moreover, crop plants must adapt to adverseclimatic conditions, particularly those associatedwith the global climatic changes. Stresses due toabiotic stress factors like drought, extremetemperature and salinity and heavy metal toxicityinflect tremendous losses in crop productivity andare considered as major challenging factors forfuture agriculture sustainability. This topic wasaddressed in this special issue in several papers.Ud-Din et al. (2015) addressed drought effect onrice yield in relation to hormonal application.Siddika et al. (2015) studied the response to hightemperature stress of Basella alba, a leaf vegetablecommonly names as vine spinach.On the topic of heavy metal toxicity, Fasahat(2015) reviewed progress made in understandingcadmium toxicity and tolerance in rice. The specialissue also include studies on nutrient uptake fromunder saline conditions in potato (Oustani et al.,2015) and ion content in wild sage (Lantanacamara) treated with mepiquat chloride applicationunder shading (Matsoukis et al., 2015). In additionAjambang et al. (2015) examined the response ofoil palm to defoliation stress. Obviously,understanding abiotic and biotic stress mechanismsis essential for the development of tolerant cropcultivars under the global climate change.ReferencesAjambang, W., S. W. Ardie, H. Volkaert, M.Galdima and S. Sudarsono. 2015. Hugecarbohydrate assimilates delay response tocomplete defoliation stress in oil palm (Elaeisguineensis Jacq.). Emir. J. Food Agric.27(1):126-137.Bakhsh, A. 2015. Genetic engineering of cropplants against abiotic stress: Current