Crops experience an assortment of environmental stresses which include abiotic viz., drought, water logging, salinity, extremes of temperature, high variability in radiation, subtle but perceptible changes in atmospheric gases and biotic viz., insects, birds, pests, weeds, pathogens (viruses and other microbes). The ability to tolerate or adapt and over winter by effectively countering these stresses is a very multifaceted phenomenon.
In addition, the inability to do so which renders the crops susceptible is again the result of various exogenous and endogenous interaction in the ecosystem. Both biotic and abiotic stresses occur at various stages of plant development and frequently more than one stress concurrently affects the crop. Stresses result in both universal and definite effects on plant growth and development.
One of the imposing tasks for the crop researchers globally is to distinguish and to diminish effects of these stress factors on the performance of crop plants, especially with respect to yield and quality of harvested products. This is of special significance in view of the impending climate change, with complex consequences for economically profitable and ecologically and environmentally sound global agriculture.
The challenge at the hands of the crop scientist in such a scenario is to promote a competitive and multifunctional agriculture, leading to the production of highly nourishing, healthy and secure food and animal feed as well as raw materials for a wide variety of industrial applications. In order to successfully meet this challenge researchers have to understand the various aspects of these stresses in view of the current development from molecules to ecosystems. Crop Stress and Its Management: Perspectives and Strategies will focus on the following broad research areas in relation to these stresses which are in the forefront in contemporary crop stress research.
Preface
1. Overview of plant stresses: Mechanisms, adaptations and research pursuit
2. Dryland Agriculture: Bringing resilience to crop production under changing climate
3. Abiotic and biotic stresses in Plantation Crops: Adaptation and Management
4. Enhancing productivity and performance of oil seed crops under environmental stresses
5. Applications of Machine Learning for Maize Breeding for stress
6. Heat stress in rice - physiological mechanisms and adaptation strategies
7. Improvement of drought resistance in crops:From conventional breeding to genomic selection
8. Plant response and tolerance to abiotic oxidative stress: antioxidant defense is the key
9. Transcription Factors and Genes in Abiotic Stress
10. Chlorophyll a fluorescence in abiotic stress
11. Crop Stress and Aflatoxin Contamination: Perspectives and Prevention Strategies
12. Role of Ethylene and Plant Growth-Promoting Rhizobacteria in Stressed Crop Plants
13. RNAi: Machinery and role in pest and disease management
14. Conservation Biology
15. Postharvest biocontrol - New concepts and application
16. Remote Sensing of Biotic Stress in Crop Plants and its Applications for Pest Management
17. Nematode Pathogens of Crops: Consequences of Climate Change
18. Socio Economic and Policy Issues in Abiotic Stress Management
19. Changing roles of Agricultural Extension: Harnessing Information and Communications Technology (ICT) for adapting to changing climate
Index