Plant Tolerance to Drought Stress with Emphasis on Wheat

Abstract

Environmental stresses, such as drought, have negative effects on crop yield. Drought is a stress whose impact tends to increase in some critical regions. However, the worldwide population is continuously increasing and climate change may affect its food supply in the upcoming years. Therefore, there is an ongoing effort to understand the molecular processes that may contribute to improving drought tolerance of strategic crops. These investigations should contribute to delivering drought-tolerant cultivars by selective breeding. For this reason, it is worthwhile to review regularly the literature concerning the molecular mechanisms and technologies that could facilitate gene pyramiding for drought tolerance. This review summarizes achievements obtained using QTL mapping, genomics, synteny, epigenetics, and transgenics for the selective breeding of drought-tolerant wheat cultivars. Synthetic apomixis combined with the msh1 mutation opens the way to induce and stabilize epigenomes in crops, which offers the potential of accelerating selective breeding for drought tolerance in arid and semi-arid regions.

Mechanistic Insights on Salicylic Acid-Induced Enhancement of Photosystem II Function in Basil Plants under Non-Stress or Mild Drought Stress

“…With the progressively increasing water-deficit stress episodes due to climate change [ 1 , 3 , 81 ], research on crop tolerance to water deficit is fundamental to alleviate expected pressures on water resources [ 82 ]. Foliar application of SA has been shown to alleviate the adverse effects of drought stress and salinity by improving osmotic potential, reducing membrane damage, regulating stomatal conductance and transpiration rate, and enhancing photosynthesis [ 54 , 55 ].…”