Chapters authored
Understanding Plant Responses to Drought and Salt Stresses: Advances and Challenges in “Omics” Approaches
Global climatic changes and the temperature-associated fluctuations in drought, soil and water salinization and flooding have resulted in huge pressure on crop plants for their optimum yield potential. These challenges have to be met through innovative scientific technologies. Recent advances in the “Omics” approaches such as transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics offer new dimensions for understanding plant responses to drought and salt stresses and identification of major genes/QTLs for generation of resistant germplasm. Most importantly, the proteomics coupled with bioinformatics tools have accelerated the proteins characterization at the organ, tissue, organelle and membrane levels. Here we present an update on the progress of “Omics” approaches to understand plant responses to drought and salt stress particularly in the last decade. Future challenges and solution efforts are also discussed in the ways of omics approaches. The need for research involving integrated omics technologies with advanced tools and to meet the future challenges toward practical implementation of these technologies for crop improvement against drought and salinity stresses is also discussed.
Part of the book: Transgenic Crops