Cross-Protection by Oxidative Stress: Improving Tolerance to Abiotic Stresses Including Salinity

Abstract

Abiotic stresses severely limit crop productivity. Plants being sessile, they are continuously exposed to a broad range of environmental stresses. Hence, multiple stress situations are more likely to occur in field conditions. Nevertheless, plants have evolved strategies to sense their environment to modulate its growth. However, its prime aim is to survive under adverse conditions and complete its life cycle. It is with the idea to increase or sustain productivity under adverse conditions that we are interested in. The response of plants to adverse environmental condition is sensed by changes in ROS leading to oxidative stress. Hence, it can be speculated that plants that are tolerant to oxidative stress would also be tolerant to multiple abiotic stress (abiotic stress-induced oxidative stress). In other words, cross-protection to multiple abiotic stresses can be achieved by developing plants tolerant to oxidative stress. Cross-protection can be enhanced by developing inherent tolerance by using conventional breeding or genetic engineering techniques or induced tolerance by priming. Here we try to compile the opinion of using oxidative stress tolerance as first line of defense against multiple abiotic stresses leading to cross-protection in field conditions.