Plant Performance Under Environmental Stress

Global climate change is bound to create a number of abiotic and biotic stresses in the environment, which would affect the overall growth and productivity of plants. Like other living beings, plants have the ability to protect themselves by evolving various mechanisms against stresses, despite being sessile in nature. They manage to withstand extremes of temperature, drought, flooding, salinity, heavy metals, atmospheric pollution, toxic chemicals and a variety of living organisms, especially viruses, bacteria, fungi, nematodes, insects and arachnids and weeds. Incidence of abiotic stresses may alter the plant-pest interactions by enhancing susceptibility of plants to pathogenic organisms. These interactions often change plant response to abiotic stresses.

Plant growth regulators modulate plant responses to biotic and abiotic stresses, and regulate their growth and developmental cascades. A number of physiological and molecular processes that act together in a complexregulatory network, further manage these responses. Crosstalk between autophagy and hormones also occurs to develop tolerance in plants towards multiple abiotic stresses. Similarly, biostimulants, in combination with correct agronomic practices, have shown beneficial effects on plant metabolism due to the hormonal activity that stimulates different metabolic pathways. At the same time, they reduce the use of agrochemicals and impart tolerance to biotic and abiotic stress. Further, the use of bio- and nano-fertilizers seem to hold promise to improve the nutrient use efficiency and hence the plant yield under stressful environments. It has also been shown that the seed priming agents impart stress tolerance. Additionally, tolerance or resistance to stress may also be induced by using specific chemical compounds such as polyamines, proline, glycine betaine, hydrogen sulfide, silicon, β-aminobutyric acid, γ-aminobutyric acid and so on.

This book discusses the advances in plant performance under stressful conditions. It should be very useful to graduate students, researchers, and scientists in the fields of botanical science, crop science, agriculture, horticulture, ecological and environmental science.

Professor Azamal Husen (BSc from Shri Murli Manohar Town Post Graduate College, Ballia, UP; MSc from Hamdard University, New Delhi; and PhD from Forest Research Institute, Dehra Dun, India) is a Foreign Delegate at Wolaita Sodo University, Wolaita, Ethiopia. He has served the University of Gondar, Ethiopia, as a Full Professor of Biology, and also worked as the Coordinator of MSc Program and the Head, Department of Biology. He was a Visiting Faculty of the Forest Research Institute, and the Doon College of Agriculture and Forest at Dehra Dun, India. He has a more than 20 years’ experience of teaching, research and administration. Dr. Husen specializes in biogenic nanomaterials fabrication and their application, plant response to nanomaterials, plant production and adaptation to harsh environments at physiological, biochemical and molecular levels, herbal medicine, and clonal propagation and improvement of tree species. He has conducted several research projects sponsored by various funding agencies, including the World Bank, the Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR), the Indian Council of Forest Research Education (ICFRE); and the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC), etc. He has published over 100 research papers, review articles and book chapters, edited books of international repute, presented papers in several conferences, and produced over a dozen of manuals and monographs. Dr. Husen received four fellowships from India and a recognition award from University of Gondar, Ethiopia, for excellent teaching, research and community service. An active organizer of seminars/conferences and an efficient evaluator of research projects and book proposals as he is, Dr. Husen has been on the Editorial board and the panel of reviewers of several reputed journals of Elsevier, Frontiers Media SA, Taylor & Francis, Springer Nature, RSC, Oxford University Press, Sciendo, The Royal Society, CSIRO, PLOS and John Wiley & Sons. He is included in the advisory board of Cambridge Scholars Publishing, UK. He is a Fellow of the Plantae group of American Society of Plant Biologists, and a Member of International Society of Root Research, Asian Council of Science Editors, and INPST, etc. Also, he is Editor-in-Chief of American Journal of Plant Physiology; and a Series Editor of ‘Exploring Medicinal Plants’ published by Taylor & Francis Group, USA.