**Abstract**

Abiotic stress is one of the primary causes of crop yield loss worldwide; it contributes to a nearly 50% reduction in crop production. Anti-oxidants are produced in plants to scavenge ROS that causes cellular damage during abiotic stress. The plant stress response is a complex mechanism that involves protein initiation pathways, abscisic acid signaling, transcriptional and post-transcriptional modifications. Abiotic stress-inducible genes are divided into two groups based on protein products, one is for signal transduction and other is for expressing resistance. Transcriptional factors bind to the promoter of the target gene at specific DNA sequences thus regulating the gene expression, so different kinds of transcriptional factors known as regulons are involved in regulation of genes during drought, salinity and cold stress.

**Keywords:** abiotic stress, transcriptional factors, signalling, genes
