Environmental stresses represent the most limiting factors to agricultural productivity worldwide. Their impact is not only on presently cultivated crops, they are also significant barriers to the introduction of crop plants in noncultivated areas. A significant global problem in the improvement of agriculture is the major variation in annual crop yields due to variations in environmental stresses such as drought, flooding, salinity, and temperature variations. This summary presents current background and research knowledge on all important environmental stresses and their respective influence on plant growth, development and crop yield as well as on biochemical and physiological events within plant tissues in reaction to changing environmental conditions.

Inhalt
One: Drought Stress.- Water Use Efficiency in Water and Salt Stressed Lycopersicon pennellii and Lycopersicon esculentum Plants.- Water Stress and Stem Conductivity.- Metabolic Consequences of Seed Maturation Drying.- Abscisic Acid as a Factor in Modifying Drought Resistance.- Breeding Methods for Drought Resistance.- Amino Acid Metabolism in Relation to Osmotic Adjustment in Plant Cells.- Betaine Synthesis as a Component of Osmoregulation.- Biochemical and Genetic Characterization of Betaine Aldehyde Dehydrogenase.- Osmotin: A Protein Associated with Osmotic Stress Adaptation in Plant Cells.- Salmonella typhimurium Mutants that are Not Stimulated by Glycinebetaine in Media of Elevated Osmolarity.- Two: Salinity Stress.- Effects of Salinity on Plant Growth and Crop Yields.- The Possible Role of Various Membrane Transport Mechanisms in Adaptation to Salinity.- The Role of Calcium in the Regulation of Membrane and Cellular Growth Processes under Salt Stress.- Mechanisms of Adaptation to Salinity in Cultured Glycophyte Cells.- Changes in Gene Expression Elicited by Salt Stress in Mesembryanthemum crystallinum.- Reduced Growth Rate and Changes in Cell Wall Proteins of Plant Cells Adapted to NaCl.- Three: Anaerobic Stress.- Aeration in Roots.- Adenylate Energy Charge and Anaerobic Proteins.- Anaerobic Induction of Lactate Dehydrogenase.- Characterization of Nuclear Factors that Regulate Alcohol Dehydrogenase Gene Expression.- Identifying the Anaerobic Proteins of Maize.- The Response to Anaerobic Stress: Transcriptional Regulation of Genes for Anaerobically Induced Proteins.- Four: Low Temperature Stress.- Molecular Changes in Membrane Lipids During Cold Stress.- Plasma Membrane ATPase as a Key Site of Alteration by a Freeze-thaw Stress: Role in Recovery and Progressive Injury.- Membrane Assembly during Acclimation to Low Temperature: Lipid-protein Interaction.- Perturbation of Membrane Calcium as a Molecular Mechanism of Freezing Injury.- Alterations of Gene Expression during the Induction of Freezing Tolerance in a Brassica napus Cell Suspension Culture.- Osmotic Stress Causes Mechanical Freeze-Thaw Damage to Thylakoids In Vitro and In Vivo.- Five: Heat Stress.- Genetic Diversity of Heat Shock Protein Synthesis in Cereal Plants.- The Heat Shock Response in Plants: Short-Term Heat Treatment Regimes and Thermotolerance.- Developmental Expression of Heat Shock Proteins in Higher Plants.- Adaptation of Thermotolerance in Cowpea Suspension Cultures.