Cold stress is one of the prevalent environmental stresses affecting crop productivity, particularly in temperate regions. Numerous plant types of tropical or subtropical origin are injured or killed by non-freezing low temperature, and display a range of symptoms of chilling injury such as chlorosis, necrosis, or growth retardation. In contrast, chilling tolerant species thrive well at such temperatures. To thrive under cold stress conditions, plants have evolved complex mechanisms to identify peripheral signals that allow them to counter varying environmental conditions. These mechanisms include stress perception, signal transduction, transcriptional activation of stress-responsive target genes, and synthesis of stress-related proteins and other molecules, which help plants to strive through adverse environmental conditions. Conventional breeding methods have met with limited success in improving the cold tolerance of important crop plants through inter-specific or inter-generic hybridization. A better understanding of physiological, biochemical and molecular responses and tolerance mechanisms, and discovery of novel stress-responsive pathways and genes may contribute to efficient engineering strategies that enhance cold stress tolerance. It is therefore imperative to accelerate the efforts to unravel the biochemical, physiological and molecular mechanisms underlying cold stress tolerance in plants.

Through this new book, we intend to integrate the contributions from plant scientists targeting cold stress tolerance mechanisms using physiological, biochemical, molecular, structural and systems biology approaches. It is hoped that this collection will serve as a reference source for those who are interested in or are actively engaged in cold stress research.

International experts shared their latest findings on plant cold stress tolerance Improved methodologies and systems to enhance plant growth in cold-stressed environment Offers scientific paradigms for other abiotic stress-related studies in agriculture research

Autorentext
Dr. Shabir Hussain Wani is senior assistant professor at Mountain Research Centre for Field Crops, Khudwani 192101, Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology of Kashmir, J&K, India . He received his B.Sc. in agriculture from BhimRao Agricultural University Agra, India, and M.Sc. in genetics and plant breeding from Central Agricultural University, Manipur, India, and Ph.D. in plant breeding and genetics on transgenic rice for abiotic stress tolerance from the Punjab Agricultural University Ludhiana, India. After obtaining his Ph.D. he worked as research associate in the Biotechnology Laboratory, Central Institute of Temperate Horticulture (ICAR), Srinagar, India. He then joined the Krishi Vigyan Kendra (Farm Science Centre) as program coordinator at Senapati, Manipur, India. He teaches courses related to plant breeding, seed science and technology, and stress breeding and has published more than 100 papers/chapters in journals andbooks of international and national repute. He served as guest editor and reviews editor for journal Frontier in Plant Science (2015-2018). He has also edited several books on current topics in crop improvement for abiotic stress tolerance published by Springer Nature and CRC Press USA. His Ph.D. research won first prize in the North Zone Competition, at national level, in India. He was awarded a Young Scientist Award from the Society for Promotion of Plant Sciences, Jaipur, India, in 2009. He is a fellow of the Society for Plant Research, India. Recently, he received Young Scientist Award (Agriculture) 2015 from Society for Plant Research, Meerut, India. He also served as visiting Scientist at Department of Plant Soil and Microbial Sciences, Michigan State University, USA under the UGC Raman Post Doctoral Fellowship programme. He has attended several international and national conferences, presenting his research.
Dr. Venura Herath is a Senior Lecturerat Department of Agricultural Biology, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka. He obtained his Bachelor's degree in Agriculture from University of Peradeniya. His doctoral studies were carried out at University of Maine, USA on Transcriptional regulatory networks involved in plant responses to low temperature. After completion of PhD, he served as a senior lecturer at Department of Agricultural Biology, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka and he is currently serving as the Head of the Department. Dr. Herath teaches courses on functional and stress genomics at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. His findings on abiotic stress response gene networks are published in both national and international journals. Currently, he is working on development of future ready rice by modulating key transcriptional factors using transgenic and genome editing technologies. He won the Norris Charles Clements Graduate Student Award in 2011 and the Presidential Awards for Research Publications in 2012.

Inhalt

1. Cold-induced Injuries and Signaling Responses in Plants.- 2. Molecular-Genetic Approaches for the Identification of candidate cold stress tolerance genes.- 3. Redox regulation of cold stress response.- 4.Hormonal regulation of cold stress response.- 5. CBF-dependent and CBF-independent transcriptional regulation of cold stress responses in plants.- 6. Cross-talk between cold stress response signaling pathway and other stress response pathways.- 7. Proteomic responses to cold stress.- 8. What can small molecules tell us about cold stress tolerance in plants?.- 9. Breeding cold tolerant crops.- 10. Genetically engineering cold stress tolerant crops: Approaches and challenges.- Index.