Improvement of Plant Production in the Era of Climate Change (Footprints of Climate Variability on Plant Diversity)

Current trends in population growth suggest that global food production is unlikely to meet future demands under projected climate change scenarios unless the pace of plant improvement is accelerated. Plant production is facing many challenges due to changing environmental conditions and the growing demand for new plant-derived materials. These challenges come at a time when plant science is making significant progress in understanding the basic processes of plant growth and development. Major abiotic stresses like drought, heat, cold and salinity often cause a range of morphological, physiological, biochemical, and molecular changes affecting plant growth, development, and productivity; so sustainable food production poses a serious challenge to much of the world, particularly in emerging countries. This underscores the urgent need to find better ways to translate new advances in plant science into concrete successes in agricultural production. In order to overcome the negative effects of abiotic stress and to maintain food security in the face of these challenges, new, improved, and resilient plant varieties, contemporary breeding techniques, and a deep understanding of the mechanisms for offsetting harmful climate change are undoubtedly necessary. In this context, Improvement of Plant Production in the Era of Climate Change is a guide to the most advanced techniques that help in understanding plant response to abiotic stress, leading to new horizons and the strategy for the current translation studies application to overall solution to create a powerful production and crop improvement in such an adverse environment.

FEATURES

• Provides a state-of-the-art description of the physiological, biochemical, and molecular-level understanding of abiotic stress in plants
• Courses taught in universities from basics to advanced level in field of plant physiology, molecular genetics, and bioinformatics will use this book
• Focuses on climatic extremes and their management for plant protection and production, which is great threat to future generation and food security
• Understanding of new techniques pointed out in this book will open the possibility of genetic engineering in crop plants with the concomitant improved stress tolerance
• Addressing factors that are threatening future food production and providing potential solutions to these factors
• Written by a diverse group of internationally famed scholars, this book adds new horizons in the field of abiotic stress tolerance

Dr. Shah Fahad is a Professor in the Hainan Key Laboratory for Sustainable Utilization of Tropical Bioresource, College of Tropical Crops, Hainan University, Haikou, China. He obtained his PhD in Agronomy from Huazhong Agriculture University, China, in 2015. After doing his postdoctoral research in Agronomy at the Huazhong Agriculture University (2015–17), he accepted the position of Assistant Professor at the University of Haripur. He has published over 332 peer-reviewed papers (Impact factor 1050.18) with more than 300 research and 32 review articles, on important aspects of climate change, plant physiology and breeding, plant nutrition, plant stress responses and tolerance mechanisms, and exogenous chemical priming-induced abiotic stress tolerance. He has also contributed 58 book chapters to various book editions published by Springer, Wiley-Blackwell, and Elsevier. He has edited eighteen book volumes, including this one, published by CRC press, Springer, and Intech Open. He won Young Rice International Scientist award, Distinguish scholar award and Top young investigator award in 2014, 2015 and 2019 respectively. He won 15 projects from international and national donor agencies. Dr. Shah Fahad name figured twice among the top two percent scientists in a global list compiled by the Stanford University, USA. He has worked and is presently continuing on a wide range of topics, including climate change, greenhouse emission gasses, abiotic stresses tolerance, roles of phytohormones and their interactions in abiotic stress responses, heavy metals, regulation of nutrient transport processes.

Dr. Muhammad Adnan is a lecturer in the Department of Agriculture at the University of Swabi (UOS), Pakistan. He has completed his PhD (soil fertility and microbiology) from the Department of Soil and Environmental Sciences (SES) the University of Agriculture Peshawar, Pakistan and Department of Plant, Soil and Microbial Sciences, Michigan State University, USA. He has received his MSc and BSc (Hons) in Soil and Environmental Sciences, from Department of SES the University of Agriculture, Peshawar-Pakistan.

Dr. Shah Saud is currently working as an Assistant Professor in the College of Life Science, Linyi University, Linyi, China. He received his Ph.D. in Turf grasses (Horticulture) from Northeast Agricultural University, Harbin, China. He is currently working as a Post Doctorate researcher in department of Horticulture, Northeast Agricultural University, and Harbin, China. Dr. Shah Saud has published over 125 research publications in peer-reviewed journals. He has edited five books and written 35 book chapters on important aspects of plant physiology, plant stress responses, and environmental problems in relation to agricultural plants. According to Scopus®, Dr. Shah Saud’s publications have received roughly 3000 citations with an h-index of 34.