**3.3 Combined effect of abiotic factors**

The typical peculiarity of abiotic factors or abiotic stresses is that they affect the plants concurrently and causing a lot of internal and external changes simultaneously [71]. As above described cotton crop is indeterminate in nature, they have a series of systems to adapt the stressful environment. Thus, in stressful environment, for example drought or salinity problem, high temperature or soil with less minerals and nutrients, cotton plant change their behavior to face those critical environment by cracking and detaching the bolls, squares and flowers etc. [83]. Thus, under such stressful circumstances the growth of cotton roots is also limited that could be

*Different types of biotic and abiotic stresses that can affect plants. Source: Luis et al. [82].*

resulted in low yield [84]. The soils that affected by drought stress have many changes in their physiochemical properties resulting in cracking in the upper portion, superficial crusting and altered soil structure. Thus, in some cases if the coil clay content lowers to minimal level and the kind of clay micronutrients present in it sometimes leads to more than 1 m deeper cracking in soil surface. The lower level of organic matrix in soils lead to soil crusting by damaging soil hydrology [85]. The altered soil structure imparts negative effects on the interaction of soil, plant and water ultimately leading to low efficient irrigation [86]. This caused the deprived development of root network that decreases the biomass production [87].
