Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
Abiotic Stress in Plants
Yin Gong, Liqun Rao and Diqiu Yu
Additional information is available at the end of the chapter
http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/55865
1. Introduction
Living on the same planet, plants means a lot to us. No matter being taken, as our food or
treated with great commercial significance, plants are so indispensable that we have to learn
how to protect, make use of, and most important of all, get on well with them. In the first
place, what we all understand is: plants are distinguished from us or other animals by being
unable to escape from the surrounding circumstances. Thus, when they are confronted with
living-threaten pressures, their only choice is to try their best to adjust to them.
The second is "But how?" Plants have developed plenty of physical and biochemical
strategies to face up to adverse conditions. Fortunately, thanks to so many excellent
researchers' efforts in this field, we have been making so many progresses in identifying and
characterizing the mechanisms on how plants perceive outside stress and response to it.
Unfortunately, that's far from enough. In this chapter, we will mainly discuss abiotic stress
and endeavor to elucidate the mechanism of various reactions plants take at the molecular
level.
Before we start our discussion, we probably need to know what abiotic stress is all about.
Basically, it includes all the non-living environmental factors that can negatively or even
harmfully affect the growth and productivity of plants. Commonly, we choose to put
drought, flooding or submergence, salinity, extreme temperatures on our daily researching
agenda due to their key roles in producing yield loss of agricultural or industrial crops
worldwide. But other kind of abiotic stress is entitled to be paid more attention, such as high
light, deficits of inorganic nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium et al.), and for sure,
they are of definite importance for plants' growth and development. Moreover, one factor
we can not set aside is human behavior, which in a large sense put considerable pressure on
plants. Residuals of chemicals brought by agricultural practice to improve yield may
generate stress, and the increased modification of the atmosphere by human activities is
gaining weight. And what we should really stress on is the compounding damaging effects
