**5. Emerging agricultural biotechnology targeting ABA receptor signalling**

The understanding of how plants perceive stress provides the opportunity to develop novel solutions to promote crop survival by boosting stress responses during adverse conditions such as water shortage. As water conservation is one of the physiological effects of ABA, the activation of ABA signalling may also promote water use efficiency in agriculture. The world is facing a crisis of freshwater shortage and the agricultural sector is the largest consumer of the global freshwater resources. Thus, the ability to manipulate ABA responses has immense value, promoting both water conservation and food productivity. ABA responses may be manipulated by transgenic approaches involving the overexpression of the effectors of ABA signalling, the structure-guided development of high efficacy agonists, or a combination of these methods.
