Responses to Abiotic and Biotic Stresses of Gene-Edited Crop Plants

Dear Colleagues,

Various abiotic and biotic stresses can affect plant growth and development at physiological, biochemical, and molecular levels, including alterations in gene expression, accumulation of organic solutes, imbalance in phytohormones excretion, and inhibition of plant growth. Abiotic stresses, viz. temperature, drought, salinity, heavy metals and floods and biotic stresses such as insects, nematodes, fungi and bacteria cause severe damage to important crop plants worldwide. A better understanding of plants' structural and functional genomics helps to fabricate new plant varieties more efficiently and rapidly to sustain their performance under different stress and climate change scenarios. Gene discovery and functional genomics have disclosed diverse mechanisms and gene families, which confer enhanced productivity and adaptation to environmental stresses. Next-generation genomics and functional validation approaches have provided further opportunities to delve deep into the molecular mechanisms and guide the genetic improvement strategies to breed next-generation plant species. Various gene editing tools, including popularly used CRISPR/CAS9 techniques, are potentially powerful gene editing methods used to mitigate the effect of different environmental stresses. In this Special Issue of the International Journal of Molecular Sciences, we aim to publish high-quality research articles and reviews on understanding plant gene expression and the mitigation strategies of various environmental stresses using more advanced gene editing tools.

Dr. Avinash Chandra Rai is a scientist (Topical Advisory Panel in IJMS), who will assist Dr. Manoj Kumar in managing this Special Issue.

Dr. Manoj Kumar
Guest Editor

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