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The phenomenon of climate change has appeared in recent time as an unstoppable and unequivocal event due to the change of environmental condition, rising of sea level, ozone layer fluctuation, and most importantly, it has raised the global apprehension in lowering global food production. Abiotic stress is one of the major factors influencing overall performance of crop plants. The response of crop plant due to environmental alteration could be effective due to the accumulation of compatible solutes or osmoprotetctants, which contain amino acids, polyamines, sugar, and quaternary ammonium compounds. Compatible solutes play important role in mitigating the adverse effect of abiotic stresses in plants. Compatible solutes are low molecular weight compounds stabilizing cellular structure and scavenging reactive oxygen species (ROS) during abiotic stress conditions. The role of compatible solutes is very important in plant growth and development, i.e., glycinebetaine (GB) is helpful in maintaining osmotic potential, protecting proteins from denaturation and restoration of photosystem II complex (PSII) in plants. The biosynthesis of compatible solutes is important in plants especially adapting under stressful environment, in stabilizing the structure of PSII by protecting extrinsic proteins, and the introgression of genes associated with osmoprotactants from one plant to another by genetic engineering.

Nanotechnology has paved the way for overcoming numerous obstacles in agriculture by providing distinct improvements, beyond those of traditional methods. Engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) have been employed to improve plant growth and development, with specific goals of increasing crop production, suppressing plant disease and improving nutrient management. Nutrient deficiencies in soil limit crop yields worldwide. In recent decades, nanoparticles (NPs) have been considered as a mechanism for improving plant nutrition. This chapter draws attention to one of the crucial issues in agriculture management, i.e., the phytoavailability of naturally-bound nutrients in soil, particularly inorganic phosphorus (Pi), which has been an on-going concern for sustainable crop production. In most soils, substantial concentrations of inorganic and organic phosphates are present; however, approximately 88–99% of inorganic phosphorus is bound with calcium (Ca) and therefore unavailable to plants. About 30–40% of global crop yields are limited by low phosphorus availability. The content of this chapter focuses on the potential role of NPs for improving phytoavailability of soil phosphorus with special emphasis on soil properties affecting phosphorus availability; impacts of NPs on plant growth and development; potential phytotoxic effects of NPs and routes of entry in plants; and other mechanisms including biogeochemical processes.

Cold stress is one of the major causes to reduce yield in many plants among worldwide. The efforts to improve cold stress in crop plants had achieved minimal success through conventional, genetic engineering, and molecular breeding techniques. Crop plant activates metabolites, signal transduction, gene expression, and molecular network under stressful environment. Considerable progress has been anticipated through discovery of novel genes associated to stress, comparative genomic studies, and expression of gene pattern in response to abiotic stress. Therefore, it is necessary to understand physiological, molecular, and genetic response of plants under cold stress. The application of functional genomic strategies will provide basis of effective genetic engineering strategies to withstand crop plant under severe stressful conditions. Here in the current book chapter, we describe stress response mechanisms and omics approaches used in identifying stress-linked genes for the production of cold stress-tolerant crops.