Preface

Climate changes have multifaceted effects on the consequences of abiotic stress, threatening the productivity and sustainability of agricultural systems. As sessile organisms, plants generally encounter a wide range of abiotic stresses such as salinity, drought, and temperature extremes during their life span. Under stress conditions, the survival of plants relies on the coordination of stress-adaptive physiological, metabolic, and structural alterations into endogenous developmental programs. Considering the current climate change, it is of great importance to understand the processes that underpin plant growth under stressful environments and design possible strategies to overcome the expected challenges. Moreover, understanding the plant tolerance mechanisms to different abiotic stresses is inevitable for developing stress-tolerant cultivars. *Plant Abiotic Stress Responses and Tolerance Mechanisms* provides the most recent understanding of plant morpho-physiological, biochemical, and molecular responses to different abiotic stresses and highlights the underlying tolerance mechanisms against these stressors. With contributions from internationally recognized scientists, this volume contains seven chapters covering topics such as current challenges and future threats of plant abiotic stresses, regulatory networks in plants under abiotic stresses, plant adaptation to temperature extremes and salinity, plant secondary metabolites and stress tolerance, and the role of phytohormones in plant stress tolerance.

I wish to express my gratitude to the contributing scientists for their overwhelming response and for readily accepting my invitation to contribute to this book. They not only shared their knowledge but also admirably integrated scattered information from diverse fields in composing the chapters and efficiently incorporated editorial suggestions. I greatly appreciate their commitment. I am also thankful to the IntechOpen team for their generous cooperation at every stage of the book production. I hope this volume will be useful to agriculturists, environmentalists, research scholars, students, and others working on plant abiotic stresses.

#### **Dr. Saddam Hussain**

Assistant Professor, Department of Agronomy, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan (Academic Editor)

#### **Ejaz Ahmad Waraich**

Associate Professor, Department of Agronomy, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan
