Dear Colleagues,

Abiotic stresses are a significant threat to crop productivity and global food security. The intensity of abiotic stresses, including drought, heat, heavy metals, low temperature, nutrient deficiency, and salinity, is continuously increasing, which is a primary concern and needs dire attention to tackle these stresses. These abiotic stresses negatively affect the plant life cycle ranging from seed germination to growth, development, flowering, fruiting, and yield. Moreover, these abiotic stresses also negatively affect plant biochemical, physiological, and molecular processes, thereby substantially reducing growth and productivity. Therefore, to overcome the soaring food demands, it is necessary to improve abiotic stress tolerance in plants.

The conventional breeding approach substantially improved crop production in the last century; however, this strategy has reached maximum capacity owing multi-genic nature of abiotic stresses. Alternatively, recent development in various technologies, including bioinformatics, gene editing, and plant genomics, has opened new room to develop crops adapted to abiotic stress conditions. Many genes have been identified and manipulated to create stress-tolerant crops, leading to substantial improvement in crop productivity. Therefore, this Special Issue focuses on understanding the advances in plant genetics to explore different genes for improving tolerance against abiotic stresses. The present Special Issue has a broad scope. We warmly welcome publications on all aspects of abiotic stresses and the use of biotechnological and genetic engineering approaches to improve tolerance against abiotic stresses. 

Dr. Muhammad Umair Hassan
Prof. Dr. Guoqin Huang
Guest Editors

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• abiotic stress
• biotechnology
• genetics
• gene manipulation
• molecular biology
• stress tolerance
• molecular breeding
• genetic mechanism of stress tolerance