Plant responses to environmental stresses—from gene to biotechnology

Abstract

Supplying food to an ever-increasing population is one of the biggest challenges worldwide. Environmental stresses make this situation even graver. New technological approaches are imperative. Recently, genetic engineering has contributed enormously to the development of genetically modified varieties of different crops such as cotton, maize, rice, canola and soybean. Identification of stress-responsive genes and their subsequent introgression or overexpression within sensitive crop species are now being widely carried out by plant scientists. In this review, the role of biotechnology in association with genomics and its successes, endeavours, prospects and challenges in developing stress-tolerant crop cultivars are discussed.

Peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.): A Prospective Legume Crop to Offer Multiple Health Benefits Under Changing Climate

“…The past decade has seen the development and use of transgenic plants as an important approach to modify and enable crops to withstand variable and ever‐changing climatic conditions (Ahanger et al., ). In this context, transgenic approaches have been regarded as very effective for the induction of salt and drought tolerance among peanut plants so as to achieve improved yields (Krishna et al., ; Pandey et al., ; Pruthvi, Rama, Govind, & Nataraja, , ; Sarkar et al., ).…”

Assessing mitochondrial function in angiosperms with highly divergent mitochondrial genomes

“…It has long been known that mt function is plastic in plants. For example, pea seedlings grown under water stress had lower RCRs than controls (Generozova et al ., 2009) and AOX flux control also varies with environment (Fiorani et al ., 2005; Vanlerberghe, 2013; Ahanger et al ., 2017). Given our relatively low sample sizes and the large amount of within-accession (i.e., within genotype) variation seen in basic plant fitness metrics (Fig.…”

Safety assessment of genetically modified crops for yield increase and resistance to both biotic and abiotic stresses and their impact on human and environment

“…However, the development and use of genetically modified (GM) crops raise safety concerns and their impact on both organisms and environment have remained controversial. To meet the global demand biotechnology has been employed worldwide to modify different crops such as cotton, maize, rice, canola and soybean Ahanger et al 5 In 2013, 93% of the soybeans, 90% of the cotton, and 90% of the corn grown in the US were genetically engineered (GE) for either herbicide tolerance or insect resistance Economic Research Service. 6 In 2016, Levitsky's test results for the long-term toxic effects, namely allergenicity, carcinogenicity, reproductive toxicity, and the possibility of mutagenic effects of these food products on the human body and the intestinal micro flora showed the absence of reliable scientific information indicating the presence of the toxic properties of genetically modified foods, and therefore of credible evidence of the dangers of consuming these foods by humans and pets Levitsky.…”