Crop Responses and Adaptations to Temperature Stress : New Insights and Approaches

Basra (Punjab Agricultural U. in Ludhiana, India; now visiting scientist, agronomy and range science, U. of California, Davis) has gathered eight studies by an international group of specialists in agricultural science, horticulture, genetics, biology, biotechnology, and genomics. Topics include: me

Examine the ways in which various plants respond when exposed to high and low temperatures!

The growing demand for food makes breeding for high-yielding crops with built-in resistance against environmental constraints one of the most important challenges for plant breeders today. Crop Responses and Adaptations to Temperature Stress investigates the adaptive mechanisms plants have evolved in response to unfavorable temperature conditions. It describes gene transfer technology and other tolerance improvement techniques that aid in developing stress-tolerant plants.

Adverse environmental stress conditions, such as extreme temperatures, affect the productivity of important world food crops by inhibiting plant growth and development. Crop Responses and Adaptations to Temperature Stress provides valuable information on the mechanisms of stress tolerance in plants that encourage growth and enhance yield performance.

Agriculture professionals, researchers, and plant breeders will benefit from the ideas shared on such topics as:

• mechanisms of chilling injury and tolerance
• injury and acclimation of root system functions during chilling temperatures
• mechanisms of cold acclimation
• signal transduction under low-temperature stress
• mechanisms of thermotolerance in crops
• control of the heat shock response in crop plants
• the effects of heat stress on cereal yield and quality

Crop Responses and Adaptations to Temperature Stress presents detailed discussions on the effects and outcomes of crop exposure to low and high temperatures. The textual information is liberally supplemented with visual representations of field experiment data as well as comprehensive tables and schematic drawings.In addition to a detailed review of current knowledge on the molecular biology of plant responses to temperature stress and an introduction to biotechnological advances in improving crop tolerance, Crop Responses and Adaptations to Temperature Stress suggests avenues for further study and speculates on the implications of such work for the future of food production.