Rice Tolerance to Multiple Abiotic Stress: Genomics and Genetic Engineering

Abstract

Changing environment has a huge impact on bio-resources and global agriculture. Abiotic stress factors are dramatically increasing along with these uncontrolled environmental changes. Rice (Oryza sativa) is the most important crop providing food toward more than half of the world populations, and India is one of the major rice growing country. This important crop plant experiences massive yield loss due to abiotic out-lashes, e.g., salinity, drought, heat stress, cold shock, UV damage, and mineral toxicity. The sessile nature of plants make them easy targets of several environmental odds, but long-term evolutionary interaction of plants with environment in turn shapes reprogramming of its defense signaling networks tightly. The subtle changes in the environment can be sensed by the plant very efficiently and are portrayed by their genetic orchestrations. Due to enormous development in modern genomics, technologies, and biotechnological applications, the minute changes in gene expression and modification of metabolic functions can now be precisely recorded. Besides, complex modulations in metabolic network through biotechnology are implicated to overcome the situations in a positive way. Studies focusing on specific abiotic stress and its protection have long been implicated in different plants including rice. Unfortunately, growing yield loss in rice due to multiple abiotic stress factors supersedes increasing demand of this crop. Recently, a versatile approach has been flourished to meet the yield–demand ratio against multiple abiotic stresses. The present chapter describes various important abiotic stresses in rice plants, their complex defense signaling mechanism, and recent developments to combat these multiple stress factors comprehensively.