Overview
Current trends in population growth indicate that global food production is unlikely to gratify future demands under predicted climate change scenarios unless the rate of crop improvement are accelerated. Crop production faces numerous challenges due to changing environmental conditions and evolving needs for new plant-derived materials -- at a time when plant sciences are witnessing remarkable progress in understanding plant growth and development. Drought, heat, cold and salinity are among the major abiotic stresses that cause a series of morphological, physiological, biochemical and molecular alterations that adversely affect plant growth, development and\xa0productivity, consequently posing a serious challenge for sustainable food production, particularly in emerging countries. This emphasizes the urgency of finding better ways to translate new advances in plant science into concrete successes in agricultural production. To overcome the pessimistic influence of abiotic stresses and to maintain the food security, new, improved and tolerant crop varieties, contemporary breeding techniques, and cavernous understanding of the mechanisms that counteract detrimental climate changes are needed to sustain the requisite food supply. In this context, this volume provides a guide to recent developments that support the understanding of plant responses to abiotic stresses and lead to new horizons vis-a-vis prime strategies for translating current research\xa0into applied solutions to create strong yields and overall crop improvement under such unfavourable environments. Written by a diverse\xa0group of internationally famed scholars, this book is a brief yet all-inclusive resource that is immensely advantageous for researchers, students, environmentalists, soil scientists, professionals, and many others in this flourishing field of research.
