Guest Editors
Assoc. Prof. Ibrahim Al-Ashkar, Plant Production Department, College of Food and Agriculture Sciences, King Saud University, Saudi Arabia
& Agronomy Department, Faculty of Agriculture, Al-Azhar University, Egypt
Prof. Arafat Abdel Hamed Abdel Latef, Department of Botany and Microbiology, Faculty of Science, South Valley University, Egypt
Assistant Professor. Abdelhalim Ghazy, Plant Production Department, College of Food and Agriculture Sciences, King Saud University, Saudi Arabia.
Dr. walid Ben Romdhane, Plant Production Department, College of Food and Agriculture Sciences, King Saud University, Saudi Arabia
Summary
Due to climate changes as observed now and as expected in the future, there has been an increasing interest in clarifying the mechanisms of plant adaptation and tolerance against environmental abiotic and biotic stress factors. Many researchers have focused their efforts on exploring the resistance of different crop species to different abiotic stressors (alone or multiple) such as (drought, salinity, extreme temperatures, heavy metal toxicity, high light, UV radiation, and oxidative stress) and biotic stresses such as (fungi, bacteria, and viruses). Crop improvements through plant breeding programs, primarily focusing on improving a crop’s environmental adaptability and, abiotic and biotic stress tolerance in order to increase yield, have allowed agricultural production to keep pace with human population growth. Genetic tolerance/resistance represents the most economical approach to crop protection.
Plant responses to abiotic stress factors are complex and involve a wide array of morphological, physiological, and biochemical processes. Therefore, knowledge of the molecular mechanisms involved in the response and adaptation of the photosynthetic apparatus to stressful conditions is of great importance for a deeper understanding of plant tolerance under abiotic stress, which can support new strategies for the development of climate changes crops. Biotic resistance, one goal of understanding plant/pathogen interactions at the molecular level is to facilitate disease resistance in crop species. Disease resistance is often the most dynamic component of the crop breeding process, requiring continual updating owing to pathogen adaptation to plant genotypes to engineer resistance that is broad (effective against most or all genotypes of the pathogen).
The genetic identification of cultivars/lines using morphological measurements alone is not enough. Due to advances in molecular genetics, various techniques have emerged for assaying genetic variation such as molecular marker technologies (molecular-assisted selection (MAS), paternity analysis, quantitative trait loci (QTL) mapping, assessing genetic variability, cultivar identification, phylogenetic relationship analysis, and genetic mapping) and molecular genetic technology (gene expression analysis). High-throughput tools have supported plant breeders in increasing the rate of stability of the genetic gain of interpretive traits and obtain a more reliable assessment of a great number of genotypes through multidimensional (multivariate) technical methods (e.g., multicollinearity, multiple regression, principal component analysis, path analysis, MANOVA and discriminant analysis)
Scientists from all over the world are invited to submit original research and review articles on topics related to crop tolerance to adverse environmental conditions.
Keywords
Crops breeding; grain yield and quality assessments;crops response to biotic and abiotic influences; stability and adaptability of crops cultivars/germplasm; crops genetic resources; molecular marker technologies; gene expression analysis; multivariate analysis
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