Physiological, biochemical, and morphological approaches to mitigate the effects of abiotic stress in plants

Abiotic stress is a physiological state that results in the overproduction and accumulation of reactive oxygen species in higher plants in response to their exposure to unfavorable environmental conditions. During the past few years, advancement in characterization techniques and genetic engineering has made a significant impact on our understanding of how plants protect themselves against abiotic stress conditions. Numerous genes involved in plant’s antioxidant pathways have been cloned and characterized. This chapter comprises a detailed understanding of abiotic stress and the various morphophysiological as well as biochemical mitigation strategies employed by a plant to combat abiotic stress condition generated by multiple environmental factors such as light intensity, drought, waterlogging, salinity, wound, low or high temperature, heavy metal toxicity, and oxidative stress. A more in-depth understanding could help in conceptualizing the idea of how plants adopt different approaches to survive in stress-prone conditions and also in the development of stress-resistant varieties of plants with more efficient mechanisms to mitigate the individual as well as combined side effects of abiotic stresses thereby enhancing grain production and yield, leading to higher agricultural productivity.