Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Plant abiotic stress tolerance: Insights into resilience build-up

  • Review
  • Published:
Journal of Biosciences Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Climate change and the consequential unpredictable environmental stress conditions negatively impact crop productivity. It has thus become a challenge to develop solutions for food security and sustainable agriculture in the backdrop of increasing population pressure and dwindling land and water resources. This further necessitates that focus of international research should be on curtailing yield losses through improved crop breeding practices and genetic manipulation for the development of resistant crop varieties. Plants being sessile, have developed a complex regulatory network of genetic machinery which includes transcription factors, small RNAs, signalling pathways, stress sensors and defense pathways. Needless to say, research efforts have exploited this genetic reservoir for manipulating crop plants for tolerance or resistance against different stresses. In the past few decades, significant achievement has been made for developing transgenic plants for a wide variety of single or multiple stress tolerance associated traits. Several regulatory mechanisms have been identified to fine tune and tailor the tolerance response in target sensitive crops. The advent of metabolic engineering has added new dimensions to manipulate stress tolerance pathways. Novel strategies are needed to develop stable, superior performing lines under challenging field environment without yield penalty and significant success has to be achieved to translate the research outcome from lab-to-land to reach farmer’s fields.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Figure 1
Figure 2

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Abberton M, Batley J and Bentley A 2016 Global agricultural intensification during climate change: a role for genomics, Plant Biotech. J. 14 1095–1098

  • Antoniou C, Savvides A, Christou A and Fotopoulos V 2016 Unravelling chemical priming machinery in plants: the role of reactive oxygen-nitrogen-sulfur species in abiotic stress tolerance enhancement. Curr. Opin. Plant Biol. 33 101–107

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Atkinson NJ and Urwin PE 2012 The interaction of plant biotic and abiotic stresses: from genes to the field. J. Exp. Bot. 63 3523–3543

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Batley J and Edwards D 2016 The application of genomics and bioinformatics to accelerate crop improvement in a changing climate. Curr. Opin. Plant Biol. 30 78–81

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Bhaskara GB, Yang TH and Verslues PE 2015 Dynamic proline metabolism: importance and regulation in water limited environments. Front. Plant Sci. 6 484

    PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Bose J, Rodrigo-Moreno A and Shabala S 2014 ROS homeostasis in halophytes in the context of salinity stress tolerance. J. Exp. Bot. 65 1241–1257

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Bose J, Rodrigo-Moreno A, Lai D, Xie Y, Shen W and Shabala S 2015 Rapid regulation of the plasma membrane H+-ATPase activity is essential to salinity tolerance in two halophyte species, Atriplex lentiformis and Chenopodium quinoa. Ann. Bot. 115 481–494

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Checker VG, Chhibbar AK and Khurana P 2012 Stress-inducible expression of barley Hva1 gene in transgenic mulberry displays enhanced tolerance against drought, salinity and cold stress.Transgenic Res. 21 939–957

  • Coolen S, Van Pelt JA, Wees SCM and Pieterse CMJ 2019 Mining the natural genetic variation in Arabidopsis thaliana for adaptation to sequential abiotic and biotic stresses. Planta 249 1087–1105

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Ferguson JN 2019 Climate change and abiotic stress mechanisms in plants. Emerg. Topics Life Sci. 3 165–181

  • Flowers TJ and Colmer TD 2008 Salinity tolerance in halophytes. New Phytol. 179 945–963

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Flowers TJ and Colmer TD 2015 Plant salt tolerance: adaptations in halophytes. Ann. Bot. 115 327–331

    CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Guan R, Qu Y, Guo Y, et al. 2014 Salinity tolerance in soybean is modulated by natural variation in GmSALT3. Plant J. 80 937–950

    Google Scholar 

  • Haak DC, Fukao T, Grene R, Hua Z, Ivanov R, Perrella G and Li S 2017 Multilevel regulation of abiotic stress responses in plants. Front. Plant Sci. 8 1564

    PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Hasegawa PM 2013 Sodium (Na+) homeostasis and salt tolerance of plants. Environ. Exp. Bot. 92 19–31

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Isayenkov SV 2019 Genetic sources for the development of salt tolerance in crops. Plant Growth Reg. 89 1–17

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Jha S 2019 Transgenic approaches for enhancement of salinity stress tolerance in plants; in Molecular approaches in plant biology and environmental challenges, energy, environment, and sustainability (Eds) Singh SP et al. (Springer Nature Singapore Pvt. Ltd.) pp 265–322

  • Kempel A, Schadler M, Chrobock T, Fischer M and van Kleunen M 2011 Tradeoffs associated with constitutive and induced plant resistance against herbivory. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 108 5685–5689

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Krasensky J and Jonak C 2012 Drought, salt, and temperature stress-induced metabolic rearrangements and regulatory networks. J. Exp. Bot. 63 1593–1608

    CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Lamers J, van der Meer T and Testerink C 2020 How plants sense and respond to stressful environments. Plant Physiol. 182 1624–1635

    CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Lata C and Prasad M 2011 Role of DREBs in regulation of abiotic stress responses in plants. J. Exp. Bot. 62 4731–4748

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Lyzenga WJ and Stone SL 2012 Abiotic stress tolerance mediated by protein ubiquitination. J. Exp. Bot. 63 599–616

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Ma C, Burd S and Lers A 2015 miR408 is involved in abiotic stress responses in Arabidopsis. Plant J. Cell Mol. Biol. 84 169–187

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Mamta B and Rajam MV 2018 RNA interference: A promising approach for crop improvement. In: Gosal S and Wani S (eds), Biotechnologies of Crop Improvement, Volume 2, pp 41–65. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90650-8_3

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Mao H, Wang H and Liu S 2015 A transposable element in a NAC gene is associated with drought tolerance in maize seedlings. Nat. Comm. 6 8326

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Mickelbart MV, Hasegawa PM and Bailey-Serres J 2015 Genetic mechanisms of abiotic stress tolerance that translate to crop yield stability. Nat. Rev. Genet. 16 237–251

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Miller M, Song Q, Shi X, Juenger TE and Chen ZJ 2015 Natural variation in timing of stress-responsive gene expression predicts heterosis in intraspecific hybrids of Arabidopsis. Nat. Comm. 6 7453

    Google Scholar 

  • Mittler R and Blumwald E 2010 Genetic engineering for modern agriculture: challenges and perspectives. Annu. Rev. Plant Biol. 61 443–462

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Munns R and Tester M 2008 Mechanisms of salinity tolerance. Annu. Rev. Plant Biol. 59 651–681

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Naito K, Zhang F, Tsukiyama T, Saito H, Hancock CN and Richardson AO 2009 Unexpected consequences of a sudden and massive transposon amplification on rice gene expression. Nature 461 1130–1134

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Negi P, Rai AN and Suprasanna P 2016 Moving through the stressed genome: Emerging regulatory roles for transposons in plant stress response. Front. Plant Sci. 7 1448

    PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Nikalje GC, Nikam TD and Suprasanna P 2017 Looking at halophytic adaptation to high salinity through genomics landscape. Curr Genom. 18 6

    Google Scholar 

  • Nongpiur RC, Singla-Pareek SL and Pareek A 2016 Genomics approaches for improving salinity stress tolerance in crop plants. Curr. Genom. 17 343–357

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Pandey M, Srivastava AK, D’Souza SF and Penna S 2013 Thiourea, a ROS scavenger, regulates source-to-sink relationship to enhance crop yield and oil content in Brassica juncea (L.). PLoS One 8 e73921

  • Patel P, Yadav K, Ganapathi TR and Suprasanna P 2019a Plant miRNAome: cross talk in abiotic stressful times; in Genomics-assisted breeding for crop improvement: abiotic stress tolerance (Eds) Rajpal VR, Sehgal D, Kumar A and Raina SN (Springer) pp 25–52

    Google Scholar 

  • Patel P, Yadav K, Srivastava AK, Suprasanna P and Ganapathi TR 2019b Overexpression of native MusamiR397 enhances plant biomass without compromising abiotic stress tolerance in banana. Sci. Rep. 9 16434

    PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Paul S and Roychoudhury A 2018 Transgenic plants for improved salinity and drought tolerance; in Biotechnologies of crop improvement volume 2 (Eds) Gosal SS and Wani SH (Berlin: Springer) pp141–181

  • Pereira A 2016 Plant Abiotic stress challenges from the changing environment. Front. Plant Sci. 7 1123

    PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Puchta H 2017 Applying CRISPR/Cas for genome engineering in plants: the best is yet to come. Curr. Opin. Plant Biol. 36 1–8

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Ren ZH, Gao JP, Li LG, Cai XL, Huang W, Chao DY, Zhu MZ, WangZY, Luan S and Lin HX 2005 A rice quantitative trait locus for salt tolerance encodes a sodium transporter. Nat. Genet. 37 1141–1146

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Shriram V, Kumar, V, Devarumath RM, Khare TS and Wani SH 2016 MicroRNAs as potential targets for abiotic stress tolerance in plants. Front. Plant Sci. 7 817

    PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Srivastava AK, Srivastava S, Mishra S, D’Souza SF and Suprasanna P 2014 Identification of redox-regulated components of arsenate (As(V)) tolerance through thiourea supplementation in rice. Metallomics 6 1718–1730

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Srivastava AK, Srivastava S, Penna S and D’Souza SF 2011 Thiourea orchestrates regulation of redox state and antioxidant responses to reduce the NaCl-induced oxidative damage in Indian mustard (Brassica juncea (L.) Czern.). Plant Physiol. Biochem. 49 676–686

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Srivastava A, Pasala R, Minhas P and Suprasanna P 2016 Plant bioregulators for sustainable agriculture: Integrating redox signaling as a possible unifying mechanism. Advances in agronomy 137 237–278

    Google Scholar 

  • Srivastava AK, Sablok G, Hackenberg M, Deshpande U and Suprasanna P 2017 Thiourea priming enhances salt tolerance through co-ordinated regulation of microRNAs and hormones in Brassica juncea. Sci. Rep. 7 45490. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep45490

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Srivastava A, Suprasanna P, Srivastava S and D’Souza SF 2010 Thiourea mediated regulation in the expression profile of aquaporins and its impact on water homeostasis under salinity stress in Brassica juncea roots. Plant Sci. 178 517–522

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Sunkar R, Li YF and Jagadeeswaran G 2012 Functions of microRNAs in plant stress responses.Trends Plant Sci. 17 196–203

  • Suprasanna P and Ghag SB 2019 Plant tolerance to environmental stress: translating research from lab to land; in Molecular plant abiotic stress: biology and biotechnology 1st edition (Eds) Roychoudhury A and Tripathi DK (JohnWiley & Sons Ltd)

  • Suprasanna P, Ghuge SA, Patade VY, et al. 2018 Genomic roadmaps for augmenting salinity stress tolerance in crop plants; in Salinity responses and tolerance in plants (Eds) Kumar V, Wani SH, Suprasanna P and Tran L-SP (Springer, Berlin) pp 189–216

    Google Scholar 

  • Tardieu F, Cabrera-Bosquet L, Pridmore T and Bennett M 2017 Plant phenomics, from sensors to knowledge. Curr. Biol. 27 R770–R783

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Tester M and Langridge P 2010 Breeding technologies to increase crop production in a changing world. Science 327 818–822

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Thomson MJ, de Ocampo M, Egdane J, Rahman MA, Sajise AG and Adorada DL 2010 Characterizing the Saltol quantitative trait locus for salinity tolerance in rice. Rice 3 148–160

    Google Scholar 

  • VanWallendael A, Soltani A, Emery NC, Peixoto MM, Olsen J and Lowry DB 2019 A molecular view of plant local adaptation: Incorporating stress-response networks. Annu. Rev. Plant Biol. 70 559–583

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Varshney RK, Bansal KC, Aggarwal PK, Datta SK and Craufurd PQ 2011 Agricultural biotechnology for crop improvement in a variable climate: hope or hype? Trends Plant Sci. 16 363–371

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Varshney RK, Singh VK, Kumar A, Powell W and Sorrels ME 2018 Can genomics deliver climate-change ready crops? Curr. Opin. Plant Biol. 45 205–211

    CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Wang H, Wang H, Shao H and Tang X 2016 Recent advances in utilizing transcription factors to improve plant abiotic stress tolerance by transgenic technology. Front. Plant Sci. 7 67

    PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Wani SH, Kumar V, Khare T, Rajasheker G, Maheshwari P, Katalin S, Suprasanna P and Kavi Kishor PB 2020 Engineering salinity tolerance in plants: progress and prospects. Planta 251 76

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Yang M, Lu K, Zhao FJ, Xie W, et al. 2018 Genome-wide association studies reveal the genetic basis of ionomic variation in rice. Plant Cell 30 2720–2740

    CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Zhang B and Wang Q 2014 MicroRNA-based biotechnology for plant improvement. J. Cell Physiol. https://doi.org/10.1002/jcp.24685

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Zhang H, Mittal N, Leamy LJ, Barazani O and Song BH 2016 Back into the wild-apply untapped genetic diversity of wild relatives for crop improvement. Evol. Appl. 10 5–24

    PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Zhou M, Li D, Li Z, Hu Q, Yang C, Zhu L and Luo H 2013 Constitutive expression of a miR319 gene alters plant development and enhances salt and drought tolerance in transgenic creeping bent grass. Plant Physiol. 161 1375–1391

    CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Zhu JK 2016 Abiotic stress signaling and responses in plants. Cell 167 314–324

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

PS would like to thank Dr. Ashish Srivastava, NABTD, BARC, for going through the draft version, and all colleagues and students who contributed to some of the studies mentioned in the manuscript.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Nuclear Agriculture and Biotechnology Division, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Trombay, Mumbai, 400 085, India

    Penna Suprasanna

Authors
  1. Penna Suprasanna
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Penna Suprasanna.

Additional information

This article is part of the Topical Collection: Genetic Intervention in Plants: Mechanisms and Benefits.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Suprasanna, P. Plant abiotic stress tolerance: Insights into resilience build-up. J Biosci 45, 120 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12038-020-00088-5

Download citation

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12038-020-00088-5

Keywords

Search

Navigation