Introduction to Drought Tolerance in Plants

For developing an effective and efficient system for coping with drought management, the first and foremost task is understand the morphological, biochemical, physiological and molecular changes in plants upon climate alteration. Changing climatic conditions and global warming is causing severe drought condition that is aggravating the food security issue worldwide. The reason for the concern is a complex relationship between prolonged drought period, scarcity of water for irrigation, water deficit area, disturbed rainfall pattern, degraded soil quality, germplasm erosion and increasing food consumption rate. The major goal of sustainable agriculture is to reflect on crop productivity whereas some hope is directly linked with genetic improvement of crops which could provide an effective strategy to enhance the drought tolerance capacity in plants. This needs to be understood in terms of field trials for various varietal development initiatives and addressed better for drought management. Prolonged drought conditions affects the molecular, biochemical, morphological and physiological characteristics of the plants. This book covers the role of drought in reducing the yields and measures to mitigate the losses. Advanced technologies like genome-assisted breeding and nanotechnology are discussed in this book. This book can serve as a handbook for undergraduates and postgraduates who are interested in working on understanding the mechanism and development of drought-tolerant plants through modern breeding approaches.