Abscisic acid (ABA) is a plant hormone that plays a critical role in the response to environmental stress conditions, especially regulation of the stomatal aperture under water-deficit conditions. The signal transduction occurring during the stress response is initiated by transcription of defense-related genes. Here, we isolated the pepper ethylene-responsive transcription factor CaAIEF1 (Caps...

Pulses are a major source of dietary protein for the largely vegetarian population of India. However, the production of pulses is limited because of heavy losses due to biotic (viral) and abiotic stresses such as salinity of the soil. Therefore, the present proposal is aimed at overcoming this problem in Vigna mungo (black gram) by introducing the glyoxylase1 (gly1) gene, the over-production of...

Soil salinity and drought are among the most serious agricultural and environmental problems of today. Therefore, investigations of plant resistance to abiotic stress have received a lot of attention in recent years. In this study, we identified the complete coding sequence of a 3'-phosphoadenosine-5'-phosphatase protein, ApHal2, from the halotolerant yeast Aureobasidium pullulans. Expression o...

Water is a critical environmental factor that restricts the geographic distribution of plants. Sheepgrass [Leymus chinensis, (Trin.) Tzvel] is an important forage grass in the Eurasia Steppe and a close germplasm for wheat and barley. This native grass adapts well to adverse environments such as cold, salinity, alkalinity and drought, and it can survive when the soil moisture may be less than 6...

Drought and salinity are major factors limiting agriculture in many regions in the world, and their importance is predicted to even increase in the near future in parallel with the ongoing global warming and climate changes. Soil and rhizosphere microbes are potential resources for counteracting such abiotic stresses in plants. The knowledge on the roles of root microorganisms in retaining soil...

Dehydrins as a group of late embryogenesis abundant II proteins represent important dehydration-inducible proteins whose accumulation is induced by developmental processes (embryo maturation) as well as by several abiotic stress factors (low temperatures, drought, salinity). In the review, an overview of studies aimed at investigation of dehydrin accumulation patterns at transcript and protein ...

Drought and high salinity are environmental conditions that cause adverse effects on the growth and productivity of crops. Aquaporins are small integral membrane proteins that belong to the family of the major intrinsic proteins (MIPs), with members in animals, plants and microbes, where they facilitate the transport of water and/or small neutral solutes thereby affecting water balance. In this...

Environmental stress conditions such as drought, heat, salinity, cold, or pathogen infection can have a devastating impact on plant growth and yield under field conditions. Nevertheless, the effects of these stresses on plants are typically being studied under controlled growth conditions in the laboratory. The field environment is very different from the controlled conditions used in laborator...

Drought poses a serious threat to the sustainability of rice (Oryza sativa) yields in rain-fed agriculture. Here, we report the results of a functional genomics approach that identified a rice NAC (an acronym for NAM [No Apical Meristem], ATAF1-2, and CUC2 [Cup-Shaped Cotyledon]) domain gene, OsNAC10, which improved performance of transgenic rice plants under field drought conditions. Of the 14...