Abstract:
How will we feed the world in the next decades?’ is one of the frequently asked questions
among the agricultural scientists. The main evolution that will increase the demand for food is a
continued rise in the number of people on our planet. While the world’s population consists of
7.3 billion people today, the UN projects that the number will increase by 1.2 per cent annually,
amounting to 8.5 billion people in 2030 and almost 10 billion people in 2050. Unfortunately, the
population growth is high in developing countries that have the least area of arable lands per
capita. Although plant scientists are successful in enhancing crop yield, food crisis is still
remaining due to lack of advanced technologies. Plants are the major providers of staple foods
for human. But as a sessile organism plants cannot avoid environmental adversities. Due to the
climate change different adverse environmental factors like salinity, drought, extreme
temperatures, toxic metals/metalloids, waterlogging/flooding, ozone etc. are reducing plant
productivity significantly. The complex nature of the environment, along with its unpredictable
conditions and global climate change, are increasing gradually, which is creating a more adverse
situation. Abiotic stress may reduce crop yield up to 70%. The episodes of drought and heat
stress is very common now-a-days. In the last couple of years, we have experienced record
breaking high temperature. In contrary, both chilling and freezing are common in many
temperate countries and also in other part of the world during winter. Some of the toxic
metals/metalloids, e.g. cadmium, lead, arsenic etc. are exceeding their allowable limits which are
also major concern for crop production and human health as well. Abiotic stresses modify plant
metabolism leading to harmful effects on growth, development and productivity which
ultimately affect food security. Therefore, understanding the molecular and physiological
mechanisms of abiotic stress tolerance and to find the ways that would increase stress tolerance
in plants are crucial in agriculture. Recently, scientists have explored the underlying
mechanisms of stress-induced damages and the tolerance mechanisms. They also developed
various techniques in conferring environmental stress tolerance in plants. Learning from the
tolerant plants and transferring these traits to sensitive plants to gain productivity is now a
major concern. With the advancement of molecular tools tailoring of stress responsive genes
become possible for the development of tolerant genotypes. Some eco-friendly approaches like
phytoremediation has also drawn attention to researchers for the mitigation of
metal/metalloids-induced damages. It is possible to minimize losses in agricultural production
due to abiotic stresses by a judicious blend of knowledge in crop physiology and crop husbandry
procedures. Since environmental stress is concerned with multidiscipline like agriculture, plant
science, plant breeding, molecular biology, soil science, chemistry and many other field of
biological science an integrated approaches with coordinated and sustainable research may
attain the goal.
