Abiotic stresses such as high temperature, low-temperature, drought, and salinity limit crop productivity worldwide. Understanding plant responses to these stresses is essential for rational engineering of crop plants. In Arabidopsis, the signal transduction pathways for abiotic stresses, light, several phytohormones and pathogenesis have been elucidated. A significant portion of plant genomes (most studies are Arabidopsis and rice genome) encodes for proteins involves in signaling such as receptor, sensors, kinases, phosphatases, transcription factors and transporters/channels. Despite decades of physiological and molecular effort, knowledge pertaining to how plants sense and transduce low and high temperature, low-water availability (drought), water-submergence and salinity signals is still a major question before plant biologists. One major constraint hampering our understanding of these signal transduction processes in plants has been the lack or slow pace of application of molecular genomic and genetics knowledge in the form of gene function. In the post-genomic era, one of the major challenges is investigation and understanding of multiple genes and gene families regulating a particular physiological and developmental aspect of plant life cycle. One of the important physiological processes is regulation of stress response, which leads to adaptation or adjustment in response to adverse stimuli. With the holistic understanding of the signaling pathways involving not only one gene family but multiple genes or gene families, plant biologists can lay a foundation for designing and generating future crops that can withstand the higher degree of environmental stresses (especially abiotic stresses, which are the major cause of crop loss throughout the world) without losing crop yield and productivity. Therefore, in this proposed book, we intend to incorporate the contribution from leading plant biologists to elucidate several aspects of stress signaling by functional genomic approaches.

First book to discuss plant signaling from a genetic perspective

Section 1- Gene expression regulation of stress signaling Chapter 1: Role of Plant Mediator Complex in Stress ResponseSubhasis Samanta, Jitendra Kumar ThakurChapter 2: Towards understanding the transcriptional control of abiotic stress tolerance mechanisms in food legumesRebecca Ford, Saleem Khan and Nitin Mantri Chapter 3: Insights into the small RNA mediated networks in response to abiotic stress in plantsSonia C. Balyan, Roseeta D. Mutum, Shivani Kansal, Santosh Kumar, Saloni Mathur and Saurabh Raghuvanshi Chapter 4: The Role of Long Non-coding RNAs in abiotic stress tolerance in plantsSwati Megha, Urmila Basu, Muhammad H. Rahman and Nat N. V. KavSection 2- Diverse Stress Signaling Networks Chapter 5: Molecular physiology of heat Stress Responses in PlantsHoma Hemmati, Dinesh Gupta and Chhandak Basu Chapter 6: The Omics of cold stress responses in plantsSomya Sinha, Bharti Kukreja, Priyanka Arora, Manisha Sharma, Girdhar K. Pandey, Manu Agarwal, and Viswanathan Chinnusamy Chapter 7: Drought stress responses and signal transduction in plantsCharu Lata, Mehanathan Muthamilarasan and Manoj Prasad Chapter 8: Physiological and molecular mechanisms of flooding tolerance in plantsLekshmy S, Shailendra Kumar Jha, Raj Kumar Sairam Chapter 9: Salt Adaptation Mechanisms of Halophytes: Improvement of Salt Tolerance in Crop PlantsRohit Joshi, Whitney Pilcher, Mangu Venkata Ramanarao, Renesh Bedre, Luis Sanchez and Niranjan Baisakh  Chapter 10: UV-B Photoreceptors, their role in photosignaling, physiological responses and abiotic stress in plantsPriyanka  Choudhury, Sindhu Kandoth Veetil and Suneel Kateriya Chapter 11: Analysis of signaling pathways during heavy metal toxicity: A functional genomic perspectiveGyana Ranjan Rout and  Jogeswar Panigrahi Chapter 12: Nitrogen and StressAnnie P. Jangam and N. RaghuramChapter 13: Signaling pathways in eukaryotic stress, aging and senescence: Common and distinct pathwaysRitika Das, Amita Pandey, and Girdhar K. PandeySection 3- Manifestation of Stress tolerance Chapter 14: Designing climate smart future crops employing signal transduction componentsBrijesh Gupta, Amit K. Tripathi, Rohit Joshi, Ashwani Pareek, Sneh L. Singla-PareekChapter 15: Abiotic Stress in Crops: Candidate Genes, Osmolytes, Polyamines and Biotechnological InterventionAutar K. Mattoo, Rakesh K. Upadhyay, and Sairam RudrabhatlaChapter 16: Abiotic stress tolerance and sustainable agriculture: A functional genomic perspectiveSarvajeet Singh Gill, Naser A Anjum, Monika Mahajan, Ritu Gill, Narendra Tuteja