Agriculture and climate change are internally correlated with each other in various aspects, as climate change is the main cause of biotic and abiotic stresses, which have adverse effects on the agriculture of a region. The land and its agriculture are being affected by climate changes in different ways, e.g., variations in annual rainfall, average temperature, heat waves, modifications in weeds, pests or microbes, global change of atmospheric CO2 or ozone level, and fluctuations in sea level. The threat of varying global climate has greatly driven the attention of scientists, as these variations are imparting negative impact on global crop production and compromising food security worldwide. According to some predicted reports, agriculture is considered the most endangered activity adversely affected by climate changes. To date, food security and ecosystem resilience are the most concerning subjects worldwide. Climate-smart agriculture is the only way to lower the negative impact of climate variations on crop adaptation, before it might affect global crop production drastically. In this review paper, we summarize the causes of climate change, stresses produced due to climate change, impacts on crops, modern breeding technologies, and biotechnological strategies to cope with climate change, in order to develop climate resilient crops. Revolutions in genetic engineering techniques can also aid in overcoming food security issues against extreme environmental conditions, by producing transgenic plants.

Impact of Climate Change on Crops Adaptation and Strategies to Tackle Its Outcome: A Review.

Abscisic acid (ABA) is an important phytohormone regulating plant growth, development, and stress responses. It has an essential role in multiple physiological processes of plants, such as stomatal closure, cuticular wax accumulation, leaf senescence, bud dormancy, seed germination, osmotic regulation, and growth inhibition among many others. Abscisic acid controls downstream responses to abiotic and biotic environmental changes through both transcriptional and posttranscriptional mechanisms. During the past 20 years, ABA biosynthesis and many of its signaling pathways have been well characterized. Here we review the dynamics of ABA metabolic pools and signaling that affects many of its physiological functions.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/jipb.12899

Abscisic acid dynamics, signaling, and functions in plants

MYB Transcription Factors as Regulators of Phenylpropanoid Metabolism in Plants

Agricultural production and quality are adversely affected by various abiotic stresses worldwide and this will be exacerbated by the deterioration of global climate. To feed a growing world population, it is very urgent to breed stress-tolerant crops with higher yields and improved qualities against multiple environmental stresses. Since conventional breeding approaches had marginal success due to the complexity of stress tolerance traits, the transgenic approach is now being popularly used to breed stress-tolerant crops. So identifying and characterizing the critical genes involved in plant stress responses is an essential prerequisite for engineering stress-tolerant crops. Far beyond the manipulation of single functional gene, engineering certain regulatory genes has emerged as an effective strategy now for controlling the expression of many stress-responsive genes. Transcription factors (TFs) are good candidates for genetic engineering to breed stress-tolerant crop because of their role as master regulators of many stress-responsive genes. Many TFs belonging to families AP2/EREBP, MYB, WRKY, NAC, bZIP have been found to be involved in various abiotic stresses and some TF genes have also been engineered to improve stress tolerance in model and crop plants. In this review, we take five large families of TFs as examples and review the recent progress of TFs involved in plant abiotic stress responses and their potential utilization to improve multiple stress tolerance of crops in the field conditions.

/pdf/recent-advances-in-utilizing-transcription-factors-to-jtq63eoee6.pdf

Recent Advances in Utilizing Transcription Factors to Improve Plant Abiotic Stress Tolerance by Transgenic Technology

This is the oldest English language journal in genetics. Founded by W. Bateson and R. C. Punnett in 1910, the Journal of Genetics was later edited by J. B. S. Haldane; later, Haldane and his wife, Helen Spurway brought the journal with them to India. After his death in 1964, Mrs. Haldane continued publication of the journal, with Madhav Gadgil and H. Sharat Chandra (Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore) and Suresh Jayakar (Laboratorio de Genetica Biochimica ed Evoluzionistica, Pavia) as editors, until her own death in 1977. In 1985, with the permission of Haldane’s heirs, the Indian Academy of Sciences resumed publication of the journal. The journal retains its traditional interest in evolutionary research that is of relevance to geneticists, even if not explicitly genetic in nature.

The journal of genetics

The MYB proteins comprise one of the largest families of transcription factors (TFs) in plants. Although several MYB genes have been characterized to play roles in secondary metabolism, the MYB family has not yet been identified in apple. In this study, 229 apple MYB genes were identified through a genome-wide analysis and divided into 45 subgroups. A computational analysis was conducted using the apple genomic database to yield a complete overview of the MYB family, including the intron-exon organizations, the sequence features of the MYB DNA-binding domains, the carboxy-terminal motifs, and the chromosomal locations. Subsequently, the expression of 18 MYB genes, including 12 were chosen from stress-related subgroups, while another 6 ones from other subgroups, in response to various abiotic stresses was examined. It was found that several of these MYB genes, particularly MdoMYB121, were induced by multiple stresses. The MdoMYB121 was then further functionally characterized. Its predicted protein was found to be localized in the nucleus. A transgenic analysis indicated that the overexpression of the MdoMYB121 gene remarkably enhanced the tolerance to high salinity, drought, and cold stresses in transgenic tomato and apple plants. Our results indicate that the MYB genes are highly conserved in plant species and that MdoMYB121 can be used as a target gene in genetic engineering approaches to improve the tolerance of plants to multiple abiotic stresses.

/pdf/genome-wide-analysis-of-the-apple-myb-transcription-factor-2f0frrp0rv.pdf

Genome Wide Analysis of the Apple MYB Transcription Factor Family Allows the Identification of MdoMYB121 Gene Confering Abiotic Stress Tolerance in Plants

Genome-wide identification and expression analysis of MAPK and MAPKK gene family in Malus domestica.

Genome-wide analysis and identification of stress-responsive genes of the NAM-ATAF1,2-CUC2 transcription factor family in apple.

Mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) cascades are highly conserved signal transduction model in animals, yeast and plants. Plant MAPK cascades have been implicated in development and stress responses. Although MAPKKKs have been investigated in several plant species including Arabidopsis and rice, no systematic analysis has been conducted in maize. In this study, we performed a bioinformatics analysis of the entire maize genome and identified 74 MAPKKK genes. Phylogenetic analyses of MAPKKKs from maize, rice and Arabidopsis have classified them into three subgroups, which included Raf, ZIK and MEKK. Evolutionary relationships within subfamilies were also supported by exon-intron organizations and the conserved protein motifs. Further expression analysis of the MAPKKKs in microarray databases revealed that MAPKKKs were involved in important signaling pathways in maize different organs and developmental stages. Our genomics analysis of maize MAPKKK genes provides important information for evolutionary and functional characterization of this family in maize.

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0057714&type=printable

Shizhong Zhang

Papers

Genome Wide Analysis of the Apple MYB Transcription Factor Family Allows the Identification of MdoMYB121 Gene Confering Abiotic Stress Tolerance in Plants

Genome-wide identification and expression analysis of MAPK and MAPKK gene family in Malus domestica.

Genome-wide analysis and identification of stress-responsive genes of the NAM-ATAF1,2-CUC2 transcription factor family in apple.

Genome-Wide Identification and Analysis of Expression Profiles of Maize Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinase Kinase Kinase

Arabidopsis MAPKKK18 positively regulates drought stress resistance via downstream MAPKK3.