**2. Abiotic stress**

Abiotic stress is defined as environmental factors that affect plants and reduce growth and yield below optimum levels. Plant abiotic stress factors include extremes in temperature, water, nutrients, gasses, wind, radiation, and other environmental conditions. Plant responses to abiotic stresses are dynamic and complex; they are both elastic (reversible) and plastic (irreversible). Since the plants are exposed to a combination of different stresses, responses are more complex and different stress pathways overlap [2]. In "Adapting Crops to Climate Change," the authors suggest "the major abiotic stresses expected to increase in response to climate change are drought, heat, salinity, and inundation" [3]. Nowadays, tolerance to drought and heat, and water use efficiency are receiving the most attention in breeding programs worldwide.

function. Three systematic approaches or "omics" improved our knowledge of the complex mechanisms that regulate genes and networks in stress response through adaptation and/or tolerance. The first "transcriptomics" includes the analysis of coding and noncoding RNAs, and their expression profiles. The second one "metabolomics" analyzes a large number of metabolites. The third one is "proteomics" in which protein and protein profiles offer a widening of knowledge about regulatory networks. The combination of data on gene expression, protein synthesis, and production of small cell metabolites give better overview of plant response to drought-stressed environment. System biology examines all factors in plants in response to environmental stresses that help in better explanation and understanding of involved mechanism. Integration of "omics" technologies allows identification of molecular study of abiotic

Introductory Chapter: Climate Changes and Abiotic Stress in Plants

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.76102

5

stress signaling and application of biotechnology in crop production in future [6, 7].

As climate change includes crop adaptation to new environmental conditions, breeders are challenged to breed for new unpredictable conditions, and to consider the genetic potential of past breeding work. "Traits that may not have been as attractive 10, 15 or 20 years ago are more important today because with these new techniques and abilities breeders are able to look at what's in their library and although they maybe couldn't tease out a specific trait previously, today they are able to" [3]. Global warming indicates necessity to look for crops that are more convenient for new environment, not only to focus on adapted crops and attempt to improve their tolerance to drought, cold, heat, or any other emerged conditions. "If you want to talk about real sustainability it is not just about making crops that are currently the emphasis…better, it's also thinking about the big picture and what other crops we are going to need to make better to fit into those cropping systems" [3]. Progress in breeding for improved drought tolerance will be accomplished by integration of conventional breeding with physiology and genomics [8]. Large amount of available data obtained from "omics" technologies put a new challenge for agricultural bioscience in their analysis and practical applications. Developing tools integrating environmental stressors and diverse genetic backgrounds, together with numerous levels of analysis will help in better understanding of biological processes in plants under stress. Although new technics can be used to predict some aspect of plant responses to stress, there is still a large gap between huge amount of available data and our understanding of biological networks and phenomena. It required having close collaboration of agronomists, molecular biologists, biochemists, and computer scientists in

**4. Perspectives**

order to provide those answers [9].

Address all correspondence to: avioleta@mrizp.rs

Maize Research Institute Zemun Polje, Belgrade, Serbia

**Author details**

Violeta Andjelkovic

#### **2.1. Drought**

Drought is expected to have the highest influence on crop productivity decrease in the frame of upcoming global warming. Predictions are that 30% of land will be exposed to extreme drought by the end of twentieth century [4]. Consequently, demand for irrigation will considerably increase in future, since about 70% of water worldwide is used in agriculture. Limited resources of irrigation water will require careful management to obtain crop production for food and feed. Various plant drought responses are classified into three categories, more than 50 years ago: drought escape, drought avoidance, and drought tolerance [5].

Plants escape drought by fast phenological development, completing their life cycle before the water deficit occurs and it is distinct from drought resistance. Drought avoidance is based on plant maintenance of water status through improvement of water balance by increased water uptake by deeper roots and/or reducing water loss by increasing leaf waxiness. Drought tolerance involves biochemical mechanisms activated after stress to enable plant to maintain functional growth under low available water. Osmotic adjustment is a typical physiological mechanism for dehydration tolerance or turgor maintenance by accumulation of osmoprotectants, ABA or increase of antioxidative and other protecting mechanism. Usually, plants combined different drought responses, and their adaptation and productivity depend on balance between all three strategies. Drought tolerance is a quantitative, complex trait, under genetic control and significant influence of the environment. Despite the increasing knowledge on plant stress responses and the advancement of "omics" technologies to screen number of genes involved in drought response, the improvement in breeding for drought tolerant crops is relatively modest.
