Browsing by Author "Avinash Chandra Rai"

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Bioactive compounds of tomato fruits from transgenic plants tolerant to drought
(Academic Press, 2015) Kavita Shah; Major Singh; Avinash Chandra Rai
Advances in agricultural biotechnology bringforth the need for experimental evidence for benefits and risks of engineered crops and the quality of fruit products obtained from them. Tomato fruits from non-transgenic (NT) and BcZAT12-transformed tomato lines ZT1-ZT6 (cv. H-86, var. Kashi vishesh) tolerant to drought, were assessed for nutritional quality, changes in physico-chemical characteristics and health-related bioactive compounds. Fruits from transgenics were evaluated for size, pH, total-soluble solids, total sugars, phenolics, flavonoids, vitamin C, lycopene and β-carotene. An early ripening of tomatoes from transgenics with more red but smaller fruits, high sugar levels, elevated phenolics, flavonoids, lycopene and β-carotene with an unaltered vitamin C levels as compared to tomatoes from non-transgenics were noted. Results suggest that although differences between tomatoes from transgenics and non-transgenics do exist, yet tomato fruits from transgenic plants have relatively improved antioxidant capacity than those from non-transgenics and therefore may be products safe for consumption. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd.
Conventional breeding approaches for abiotic stress management in horticultural crops
(Elsevier, 2021) Krishna Kumar Rai; Ajay Kumar; Ashutosh Rai; Ved Prakash Rai; Avinash Chandra Rai
Global warming due to climate change, adverse climatic conditions, and increasing attack of insect/pests has strongly impacted the growth, development, and reproduction of major horticultural crops that have posed a significant threat to global food and nutritional security. In this challenging scenario, advanced conventional breeding approaches are required to expedite the developments of stress-tolerant/resistant varieties with accelerated genetic gains. Also, along with the improved adaptation to adverse climatic conditions, new climate-resilient varieties should also be able to maintain appropriate levels of primary and secondary nutrients as well as enhanced productivity. Another conventional way to improve the production and productivity of major horticultural crops is to implement new cultivation techniques that are highly cost-effective and more efficient. Huge mapping populations such as recombinant inbred lines, near-isogenic lines and double haploids, molecular markers, marker-trait association, and mapping software are the pillars on which the conventional breeding approaches are based. In this chapter, we will be discussing conventional and marker-assisted breeding approaches for abiotic stress management in horticultural crops such as quantitative trait loci mapping, genome-wide association analysis, mutation breeding, and the importance and role of germplasm resources in the breeding of biotic and abiotic stress-tolerant/resistant crops with improved productivity. © 2021 Elsevier Inc.
Cyanobacterial availability for CRISPR-based genome editing: Current and future challenges
(Elsevier, 2022) Sandeep Kumar Singh; Ajay Kumar; Avinash Chandra Rai; Mukesh Kumar Yadav; Punuri Jayasekhar Babu; Zothanpuia; Liansangmawii Chhakchhuak; Prashant Kumar Singh; Garima Singh; Naveen Chandra Joshi; Avinash Singh; Kaushalendra; Rosie Lalmuanpuii; Esther Lalnunmawii; Bendangchuchang Longchar
Cyanobacterial genetic manipulations are optimistic for producing feedstocks, fuels, valuable chemicals, and a basic understanding of stress-induced responses. Regrettably, the newly available genome manipulation tools for cyanobacteria are far from other organisms despite their significant contributions to humanity. This chapter primarily focused on genome engineering efforts available to date for synthetic biology applications and the recent advances in investigations in the development of genome editing in cyanobacteria. Moreover, in recent years, clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) dependent approaches rapidly gained engineering popularity in all life domains. Such techniques permit markerless genome editing, simultaneous manipulation of multiple genes, and transcriptional regulation of genes. However, the cyanobacterial genome manipulations by employing the CRISPR tool are still in infancy and limited to very few reports for its synthetic applications, even though the CRISPR drastically shortened the mutant selection time and the segregation advantages. In this chapter, we highlighted the studies that have implemented CRISPR-based tools for cyanobacteria’s metabolic engineering. © 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Cyanobacterial photosynthetic reaction center in wobbly light: Modulation of light energy by orange carotenoid proteins (OCPs)
(Elsevier, 2022) Rahul Prasad Singh; Sandeep Kumar Singh; Ajay Kumar; Arpan Modi; Avinash Chandra Rai; Sandip Ghuge; Anil Kumar; Mukesh Kumar Yadav; Punuri Jayasekhar Babu; Prashant Kumar Singh; Garima Singh; Kaushalendra; Naveen Chandra Joshi; Avinash Singh; Wenjing Wang
High irradiance and fluctuating light boons substantial risk to photosynthetic life forms by summoning responsive oxygen species (ROS). To bear the high irradiance level, plants, algae, and cyanobacteria have developed mechanisms to diminution the energy hitting at reaction centers to protect it from high irradiance by a photo-defensive system. In cyanobacteria, these photoprotection systems reduce the light energy arriving at the reaction centers by reducing photosynthesis and enhancing thermal energy dissipation at the level of the phycobilisome (PB), the extra-membranous light-harvesting antenna. Fluorescence recovery proteins (FRPs) and orange carotenoid proteins (OCPs) alluded to as essential elements for this mechanism by nonphotochemical quenching (NPQ). Initially, cyanobacteria were considered not to fit for performing NPQ, and the last shreds of evidence advocated NPQ as a crucial and primary photoprotective tool. OCP comprises two domains, (1) N-terminal domain (NTD) and (2) C-terminal domain (CTD), with a solitary carotenoid as a chromophore traversing evenly in the two areas. Blue-green or high irradiance light actuates the transformation of OCP from a dormant orange state (OCPO) to a dynamic red state (OCPR). Dynamic OCP (OCPR) ties to the center of the light-harvesting antenna complex, phycobilisomes (PBs), extinguishes fluorescence, and aids dispersal abundance energy’s nonradiative pathway. OCP-intervened photoprotection mechanism effectively managed by FRP by accelerating the OCP transformation of active OCP (OCPR) to the resting state (OCPO) under light-limiting conditions. However, numerous inquiries concerning the working of FRP have stayed dubious. This chapter summarizes the current information and comprehension of the FRP and OCP in cyanobacterial photoprotection and the possibilities of exploiting these systems for plant resilience to high irradiance. © 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
De novo assembly, differential gene expression and pathway analyses for anthracnose resistance in chilli (Capsicum annuum L.)
(Springer, 2022) Rajesh Kumar; Ashutosh Rai; Avinash Chandra Rai; Vinay Kumar Singh; Major Singh; Prabhakar Mohan Singh; Jagdish Singh
Chilli (Capsicum annuum L.) is one of the most important vegetable as well as spice crops grown worldwide for its wide usage. Production of chilli is profoundly affected by anthracnose disease which is one of the most serious and destructive fungal diseases of chilli, especially in tropical and subtropical regions causing around 60–80% yield loss under severe infection. In order to understand the pattern of gene expression and development of molecular markers in chilli for management of anthracnose disease, transcriptome analysis of a resistant (IIVRC-452) and susceptible (Pusa Jwala) genotypes was carried out. Transcriptome data yielded a total of 53,921,012 and 50,079,890 reads with HQ bases 5.18 GB and 4.78 GB of FASTAq sequences and were used for de novo assembly of transcriptome for IIVRC-452 and Pusa Jwala, respectively. More than 50 thousand unigenes were identified in each genotype and around 40,000 of them could be annotated with 30% cut off identity. Digital gene expression analysis revealed a total of 3124 transcripts differentially expressed in resistant and susceptible lines. A total of 871 differential transcripts were annotated and 814 differential genes were present in both resistant and susceptible lines. Furthermore, five key candidate genes (CaLOX, CaLAG-1, CaPG, CaCYP76A2, and CaSAP-13) in pathogen-responsive pathway were identified by quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR). Transcriptome data generated in the present study is a valuable resource for focused investigation on plant–pathogen-interaction, to study the pathways involved in resistance mechanism and to identify markers for use in resistance breeding programmes. © 2021, Society for Plant Biochemistry and Biotechnology.
Drought Stress and Its Mitigation and Management Strategies in Crop Plants
(Springer International Publishing, 2020) Avinash Chandra Rai; Krishna Kumar Rai
Drought stress is becoming a daunting challenge for the twenty-first-century agriculture worldwide, provoking significant threat to food security as well as to growth and productivity of the major crops as global warming progresses. So developing cultivars with enhanced tolerance to drought stress appears to be the only feasible option for strengthening food security and crop productivity under climate extremes. In recent years, substantial effort has been made to unravel signalling processes underlying plant drought stress response and has confirmed the involvement of complex transcription regulatory networks. Coextensively, unravelling genetic composition of crop plants and identification of signalling cascades along with primitive molecular mechanisms through the deployment of “OMICS” techniques can expedite the piercing of drought tolerance mechanisms. Parallel to this, use of integrated studies can remarkably assist in elucidating the complex mechanism underlying drought stress tolerance, thus easing the gap between the existence and future knowledge about drought stress tolerance in plants. Regulation of drought stress tolerance in plants via certain stress-responsive genes and transcription factors (TFs) is now well established that galvanizes plants to endure unfavorable conditions. Growing evidence has also propounded that the connection between small noncoding RNAs and epigenetic regulation is imperative in the induction of drought-induced transcriptional regulation and stress memory. In this study, we intend to provide profound knowledge about the putative roles of TFs, small RNAs, and epigenetic modifications in the regulation of drought stress response and to contrive management strategies to improve plant defense against drought. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020.
Effect of heat-shock induced oxidative stress is suppressed in BcZAT12 expressing drought tolerant tomato
(Elsevier Ltd, 2013) Kavita Shah; Major Singh; Avinash Chandra Rai
The transcription factor ZAT12 is a member of stress-responsive C 2H2 type zinc finger protein (ZFP) reported to control the expression of stress-activated genes mediated via ROS in plants. BcZAT12-transformed tomato cv. H-86, var. Kashi vishesh (lines ZT1-ZT6) over-expressing the gene product is demonstrated herein to be tolerant to heat-shock (HS)-induced oxidative stress. Results reveal that the relative expression of ZAT12 as well as heat induced Hsp17.4 and Hsp21 gene transcripts increased in transgenic upon exposure to HS. The transformed tomato lines ZT1 and ZT5 had significantly lowered free radical formation, improved electrolyte leakage, relative water content and chlorophyll levels with an enhanced activities of antioxidant enzymes viz. superoxide dismutase, catalase, ascorbate peroxidase and glutathione reductase when exposed to HS. HS-induced oxidative stress by over-expression of the BcZAT12 gene transcripts in tomato as well as by largely enhancing the ROS-scavenging capacity and up regulation of Hsp transcripts. This enables the transgenic tomato plants to acquire a greater ability to counteract HSinduced oxidative stress, being endowed with more reduced antioxidant pools. The use of these HS-tolerant tomato lines could possibly be used for tomato cultivation in the areas affected by sudden temperature changes. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Effect of water withdrawal on formation of free radical, proline accumulation and activities of antioxidant enzymes in ZAT12-transformed transgenic tomato plants
(2012) Avinash Chandra Rai; Major Singh; Kavita Shah
Water stress often leads to the accumulation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and their excessive production alters the activities of enzymes involved in their removal. ZAT12 is a member of stress-responsive C2H2 type Zinc Finger Protein (ZFP) reported to control the expression of several stress-activated genes in plants through ROS signaling. The ZAT12-transformed tomato lines (cv. H-86 variety Kashi Vishesh) when subjected to water withdrawal for 7, 14 and 21 days revealed significant and consistent changes in activities of enzymes SOD, CAT, APX, GR and POD paralleled with an increased proline levels. Unlike that in wild-type tomato, the leaf superoxide anion and hydrogen peroxide concentrations in the transformed tomato plants did not alter much, suggesting a well regulated formation of free radicals suppressing oxidative stress in the latter. Results suggest BcZAT12-transformed tomato lines ZT1, ZT2 and ZT6 to be better adapted to drought stress tolerance by accumulation of osmolyte proline and increased antioxidant response triggered by the ZAT12 gene. Therefore, the ZAT12-transformed tomato cv. H-86 lines will prove useful for higher yield of tomato crop in regions affected with severe drought stress. © 2012 Elsevier Masson SAS.
Engineered BcZAT12 gene mitigates salt stress in tomato seedlings
(Springer, 2021) Avinash Chandra Rai; Ashutosh Rai; Kavita Shah; Major Singh
In salt-prone areas, plant growth and productivity is adversely affected. In the present study, the ZT1-ZT6 transgenic tomato lines having BcZAT12 gene under the regulatory control of the stress inducible Bclea1 promoter were exposed to three salinity levels (50, 100 and 200 mM) at the four leaf stage for 10 days. The transgenic lines showed improved growth in stem height, leaf area, root length and shoot length under saline conditions, as compared to control. Moreover, ZT1 and ZT5 lines showed lower electrolyte leakage and decreased hydrogen peroxide formation, in combination with elevated relative water content, proline and chlorophyll levels. The enzyme activity of catalase was also enhanced in ZT1 and ZT5. These results poses the present lines as an attractive alternative for tomato cultivation in salinity-affected areas. © 2021, Prof. H.S. Srivastava Foundation for Science and Society.
Engineering drought tolerant tomato plants over-expressing BcZAT12 gene encoding a C2H2 zinc finger transcription factor
(2013) Avinash Chandra Rai; Major Singh; Kavita Shah
Efficient genetic transformation of cotyledonary explants of tomato (Solanum lycopersicum, cv. H-86, Kashi vishesh) was obtained. Disarmed Agrobacterium tumifaciens strain GV 3101 was used in conjugation with binary vector pBinAR containing a construct consisting of the coding sequence of the BcZAT12 gene under the regulatory control of the stress inducible Bclea1a promoter. ZAT12 encodes a C2H2 zinc finger protein which confers multiple abiotic stress tolerance to plants. Integration of ZAT12 gene into nuclear genome of individual kanamycin resistant transformed To tomato lines was confirmed by Southern blot hybridization with segregation analysis of T1 plants showing Mendelian inheritance of the transgene. Expression of ZAT12 in drought-stressed transformed tomato lines was verified in T2 generation plants using RT-PCR. Of the six transformed tomato lines (ZT1-ZT6) the transformants ZT1 and ZT5 showed maximum expression of BcZAT12 gene transcripts when exposed to 7 days drought stress. Analysis of relative water content (RWC), electrolyte leakage (EL), chlorophyll colour index (CCI), H2O2 level and catalase activity suggested that tomato BcZAT12 transformants ZT1 and ZT5 have significantly increased levels of drought tolerance. These results suggest that BcZAT12 transformed tomato cv. H-86 has real potential for molecular breeding programs aimed at augmenting yield of tomato in regions affected with drought stress. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Expression of ZAT12 transcripts in transgenic tomato under various abiotic stresses and modeling of ZAT12 protein in silico
(Springer Science and Business Media B.V., 2014) Avinash Chandra Rai; Indra Singh; Major Singh; Kavita Shah
ZAT12 a C2H2-zinc-finger protein is an abiotic stress-responsive transcription factor in plants having less information about their structure. Transcription analysis proved that ZAT12 transcripts over expressed during drought, heat and salt stress conditions which led to an interest in 3-D structural studies of ZAT12 in Brassica carinata. Over-expression of BcZAT12 in transformed tomato plants under abiotic stresses, suggest role of ZAT12 in conferring stress-tolerance in tomato. Sequence analysis of ZAT12 protein (Accession No. ABB55254.1) from B. carinata revealed it as a 161 amino acid long protein with short conserved motif 140LDLXL144 in C-terminal, a leucine rich L-Box with—14EXXAXCLXXL23 motif in N-terminal region and presence of two conserved Zinc-Finger motifs “CXXCXXXXXXXQALGGHXXXH” between positions 42–62 and 85–105. The two zinc finger motifs have presence of two conserved glutamic acid (Glu) and phenylalanine (Phe) residues. Two methionine (Met) residues at position 94 and 102 present in ZF-motif-2 were absent in ZF-motif-1. The 94Met and 97Ala in ZFmotif-2 were found to be replaced by serine (Ser) in ZFmotif-1. Homology and ab initio structural modeling of ZAT12 encodedBcZAT12 protein of B. carinata resulted in robust 3-D models and were evaluated for structural motifs, associated GO terms and protein-DNA interactions. The BcZAT12 protein model, was of good quality, reliable, stable and is deposited in PMDB database (PMDB ID: PM0078213). BcZAT12 is annotated as an intracellular protein having molecular function in Zn-binding which in turn regulates signal transduction/translation processes in response to abiotic stresses in plants. Results suggest BcZAT12 protein to interact directly with one strand of dsDNA via electrostatic and H-bonds. © Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014.
Genetic diversity in Indian bean (Lablab purpureus) germplasm based on morphological traits and RAPD markers
(2011) Nagendra Rai; Pramod Kumar Singh; Avinash Chandra Rai; Ved Prakash Rai; Major Singh
The genetic diversity among 48 Indian bean (Lablab purpureus L. Sweet) genotypes, collected from various parts of India, was analyzed based on morphological traits and randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) markers. All the genotypes, grown in randomized block design with three replications over two consecutive years, were used to record the 15 morphological traits. Twentyfive RAPD primers amplified 6-12 banding patterns for a total of 215 scorable and 178 polymorphic bands. In cluster analysis based on morphological traits and molecular markers, the genotypes were grouped in three and two clusters, respectively. Result of cluster analysis based on RAPD data showed positive correlation with morphological characters based on Mantel's test (r = 0.1417). The wide genetic variation observed for L. purpureus in India indicates that India has a rich genetic diversity for this species and that there is an ample scope for its genetic improvement.
Potential anti-mycobacterium tuberculosis activity of plant secondary metabolites: Insight with molecular docking interactions
(MDPI, 2021) Manu Kumar; Sandeep Kumar Singh; Prem Pratap Singh; Vipin Kumar Singh; Avinash Chandra Rai; Akhileshwar Kumar Srivastava; Livleen Shukla; Mahipal Singh Kesawat; Atul Kumar Jaiswal; Sang-Min Chung; Ajay Kumar
Tuberculosis (TB) is a recurrent and progressive disease, with high mortality rates world-wide. The drug-resistance phenomenon of Mycobacterium tuberculosis is a major obstruction of alle-lopathy treatment. An adverse side effect of allelopathic treatment is that it causes serious health complications. The search for suitable alternatives of conventional regimens is needed, i.e., by con-sidering medicinal plant secondary metabolites to explore anti-TB drugs, targeting the action site of M. tuberculosis. Nowadays, plant-derived secondary metabolites are widely known for their beneficial uses, i.e., as antioxidants, antimicrobial agents, and in the treatment of a wide range of chronic human diseases (e.g., tuberculosis), and are known to “thwart” disease virulence. In this regard, in silico studies can reveal the inhibitory potential of plant-derived secondary metabolites against My-cobacterium at the very early stage of infection. Computational approaches based on different algo-rithms could play a significant role in screening plant metabolites against disease virulence of tuberculosis for drug designing. © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
Recent Transgenic Approaches for Stress Tolerance in Crop Plants
(Springer International Publishing, 2020) Krishna Kumar Rai; Avinash Chandra Rai
Exacerbation of plant growth and productivity due to a wide range of stresses has significantly affected global food security, agricultural productivity, and quality worldwide. In order to bridge the gap between the supply and demand of the ever-increasing global population, it is indispensable to foster a new breed of stress-tolerant crops with refined traits and higher yields against several abiotic and biotic stresses. The transgenic approach of conventional breeding, owing to the limited and time-consuming success due to the complex nature of genes involved in stress tolerance, is now being widely adopted to breed crop plants with enhanced stress tolerance. Thus, identification and characterization of critical genes involved in abiotic and biotic stress tolerance are an important requisite to develop stress-tolerant crops. Genetic engineering of crop plants employs two strategies (i) either manipulating single functional gene or (ii) by editing those regulatory genes which modulate the expression of other stress-responsive genes. Genome editing using artificial nucleases such as zinc finger nucleases (ZFNs), transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENS), and Clustered Regulatory Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeat (CRISPR), CRISPR-associated protein 9 (Cas9), has significantly impacted basic as well as applied research including plant breeding by accelerating the editing of target genome in precise and predictable manner. Here, in this chapter, we are not going to discuss the past transgenic development approaches; mostly we will review some of the recent advancement made in the field of transgenic plants and the potential exploitation of genome-editing tools such as in conferring environmental stress tolerance in crops under field condition. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020.
Research Trends in Genetically Modified (GM) Plants
(Elsevier, 2020) Krishna Kumar Rai; Mohd Aamir; Andleeb Zehra; Avinash Chandra Rai
Recent ground-breaking advancements in the field of biotechnology and synthetic biology have established a new platform for improving qualitative and quantitative traits in many of the economically important crops. Broad spectrum genetic variation is an essential prerequisite for developing elite germplasms/varieties and until now, the plant breeders were mainly focussed on induced mutagenesis (either by irradiation or chemical mediated induction) for enhancing natural variation in plants. However, their exploitation is often constrained due to a higher mutation rate. Therefore, in the past recent years, researchers with serendipitous mind across the globe have significantly impacted genetic engineering by developing some of the cutting-edge genome editing technologies like Zinc Finger Nucleases (ZFNs), Transcription Activators Like Effector Nucleases (TALENS) and most elemental Clustered Regulatory Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) associated protein (Cas) for basic science research. Development of ZFNs marks the inception of gene editing of target sequence leading to the development of chimeric genes to induce target mutagenesis; however, they are time consuming and much costlier to develop. TALENs offers a much more comfortable/simpler approach for inducing target mutagenesis compared to ZFNs but are much more prone to homologous recombination resulting in off target generation of random insertion and deletions (INDELs). CRISPR Cas9 system has emerged as an indispensable tool that has revolutionized the way of genome editing in the field of agricultural biotechnology. Here in this chapter, we will present an overview of gene editing tools and describe their possible application for the rewiring of transgenic crops with advanced agronomic traits. © 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Speed Breeding for Rapid Cycling of Crops for Stress Management and Global Food Security
(Springer International Publishing, 2022) Avinash Chandra Rai; Krishna Kumar Rai
The continuous expansion in human population together with increased distortion in agroclimatic conditions has diverted the attention of plant scientific communities along with agri-food sectors to ensure continuous production of good quality and quantity of foods and fuels using minimal resources. Confrontation of these future demands will require dissemination of upper hand techniques to accelerate slow improvement rate of development of substantial plant varieties through accelerating breeding programmes by reducing their generation time under controlled condition. The upper hand technique, viz. “Speed breeding”, is a method, which shortens the generation time of crop plants to expedite rapid generation advancements, i.e. up to four to five generations of crops in 1 year, which can help in the generation of valuable plant varieties and thus ensuring global food security. Speed breeding protocols have been developed for various crops such as wheat, chickpea, barley and pea which are conducted under environment-controlled growth chambers. In these crops, speed breeding has accelerated the development of improved varieties by conducting various studies such as genotyping by sequencing, mutant studies, transformation and phenotyping for trait of interest. However, limited information is available on the exploitation of this fast-track technique in the breeding programme to foster improved plant varieties in economically important crops. Here, in this chapter we have uncovered the hidden potential of speed breeding technique and its integration with other modern genomic tools such as CRISPR-Cas9, ZFN, TALENS coupled with epigenomics and next-generation sequencing for crop improvement and nutritional security. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.
Stress Tolerance in Horticultural Crops: Challenges and Mitigation Strategies
(Elsevier, 2021) Avinash Chandra Rai; Ashutosh Rai; Krishna Kumar Rai; Ved Prakash Rai; Ajay Kumar
Stress Tolerance in Horticultural Crops: Challenges and Mitigation Strategies explores concepts, strategies and recent advancements in the area of abiotic stress tolerance in horticultural crops, highlighting the latest advances in molecular breeding, genome sequencing and functional genomics approaches. Further sections present specific insights on different aspects of abiotic stress tolerance from classical breeding, hybrid breeding, speed breeding, epigenetics, gene/quantitative trait loci (QTL) mapping, transgenics, physiological and biochemical approaches to OMICS approaches, including functional genomics, proteomics and genomics assisted breeding. Due to constantly changing environmental conditions, abiotic stress such as high temperature, salinity and drought are being understood as an imminent threat to horticultural crops, including their detrimental effects on plant growth, development, reproduction, and ultimately, on yield. This book offers a comprehensive resource on new developments that is ideal for anyone working in the field of abiotic stress management in horticultural crops, including researchers, students and educators. © 2021 Elsevier Inc.