Trends in Plant Science
Abiotic stress, the field environment and stress combination
Section snippets
Abiotic stress research: a reality check
Abiotic stress conditions cause extensive losses to agricultural production worldwide 1, 2. Individually, stress conditions such as drought, salinity or heat have been the subject of intense research 2, 3. However, in the field, crops and other plants are routinely subjected to a combination of different abiotic stresses 4, 5, 6, 7. In drought-stricken areas, for example, many crops encounter a combination of drought and other stresses, such as heat or salinity 4, 5. Recent studies have
Tailoring a response to a particular stress situation
Plant acclimation to a particular abiotic stress condition requires a specific response that is tailored to the precise environmental conditions the plant encounters. Thus, molecular, biochemical and physiological processes set in motion by a specific stress condition might differ from those activated by a slightly different composition of environmental parameters. Illustrating this point are transcriptome profiling studies of plants subjected to different abiotic stress conditions: each
Case study: drought and heat stress
Drought and heat stress represent an excellent example of two different abiotic stress conditions that occur in the field simultaneously 5, 6, 7. Several studies have examined the effects of a combination of drought and heat stress on the growth and productivity of maize, barley, sorghum and different grasses. It was found that a combination of drought and heat stress had a significantly greater detrimental effect on the growth and productivity of these plants and crops compared with each of
Regulatory aspects of stress combination: a key to enhancing tolerance?
Enhancing plant tolerance to biotic or abiotic stress conditions by activating a stress-response signal transduction pathway in transgenic plants is a powerful and promising approach 3, 27, 28, 29. It is logical to assume that the simultaneous exposure of a plant to different abiotic stress conditions will result in the co-activation of different stress-response pathways. These might have a synergistic or antagonistic effect on each other. In addition, dedicated pathways specific for the
Summary and conclusions: the ‘stress matrix’
The extent of damage caused to agriculture by a combination of two different stresses (Figure 1) underscores the need to develop crops and plants with enhanced tolerance to a combination of different abiotic stresses. Drawing upon the limited physiological, molecular and metabolic studies performed with plants that were simultaneously subjected to two different abiotic stresses (Figure 2, Figure 3) 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 23, 24, 25, 26, it is not sufficient to study each of the individual
Acknowledgements
Research in my laboratory is supported by funding from The National Science Foundation (NSF-0431327; NSF-0420033) and The Nevada Agricultural Experimental Station (Publication number 03055517).
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