Improvement of Crops in the Era of Climatic Changes: Volume 2

Abiotic stress drastically limits agricultural crop productivity worldwide. Climate change threatens the sustainable agriculture with its rapid and unpredictable effects, making it difficult for agriculturists and farmers to respond to the challenges cropping up from environmental stresses. In light of population growth and climate changes, investment in agriculture is the only way to avert wide scale food shortages. This challenge comes at a time when plant sciences are witnessing remarkable progress in understanding the fundamental processes of plant growth and development. Plant researchers have identified genes controlling different aspects of plant growth and development, but many challenges still exist in creating an apt infrastructure, access to bioinformatics and good crop results. Improvement of Crops in the Era of Climatic Changes, Volume 2 focuses on many existing opportunities that can be applied methodically through conventional breeding, without touching upon the latest discoveries such as the power of genomics to applied breeding in plant biology. Written by a diverse faction of internationally famed scholars, this volume adds new horizons in the field of crop improvement, genetic engineering and abiotic stress tolerance. Comprehensive and lavishly illustrated, Improvement of Crops in the Era of Climatic Changes, Volume 2 is a state-of-the-art guide to recent developments vis–vis various aspects of plant responses in molecular and biochemical ways to create strong yields and overall crop improvement. Dr. Parvaiz Ahmad Department of Botany, Sri Pratap College, Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, India Dr. Mohd Rafiq Wani Department of Botany, Govt. Degree College (Boys), Anantnag, Jammu and Kashmir, India Prof. Dr. Mohamed Mahgoub Azooz Department of Botany, South Valley University, Qena, Egypt Dr. Lam-Son Phan Tran Signaling Pathway Research Unit, RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science, Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan Chapter 1 Brassicas: Responses and Tolerance To Heavy Metal Stress Shaista Qadir, Asiya Hameed, Nahida Tun Nisa, MM Azooz, Mohd Rafiq Wani, Mirza Hasannuzaman, Alvina Gul Kazi and Parvaiz Ahmad Chapter 2 Recent Advances in Rapid and Sensitive Screening For Abiotic Stress Tolerance Nitin Mantri, Vikas Patade and Edwin Pang Chapter 3 Transcriptomics of Heat Stress in Plants B. Sailaja, Satendra K. Mangrauthia, N. Sarla and S. R. Voleti Chapter 4 Biotic Stress and Crop Improvement Irada Huseynova, Nargiz Sultanova, Alamdar Mammadov, Saftar Suleymanov and Jalal Aliyev Chapter 5 Salt Stress and Sugar Beet Improvement: Challenges and Opportunities Abazar Rajabi, Samar Khayamim, Zahra Abbasi, and Eric Ober Chapter 6 Genotypic Variation for Drought Tolerance in Wheat Plants Jalal A. Aliyev and Irada M. Huseynova Chapter 7  Soil Contaminants: Sources, Effects and Approaches for Remediation Ghulam Murtaza, Behzad Murtaza, Nabeel Khan Niazi, and Muhammad Sabir Chapter 8 Role of Macronutrients in Plant Growth and Acclimation: Recent Advances and Future Prospective Durgesh Kumar Tripathi, Vijay Pratap Singh, Devendra Kumar Chauhan, Sheo Mohan Prasad, and Nawal Kishor Dubey Chapter 9 Mutation Breeding: A Novel Technique for Genetic Improvement of Pulse Crops Particularly Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) Mohd Rafiq Wani, Mohd Imran Kozgar, Nasya Tomlekova, Samiullah Khan, Alvina Gul Kazi, Subzar Ahmad Sheikh, and Parvaiz Ahmad Chapter 10 Organic Farming: The Return To Nature Saima Siddique, Madeeha Hamid, Ameema Tariq, Muhammad Ashraf, and Alvina Gul Kazi Chapter 11 The Role of Cytological Aberrations in Crop Improvement Through Induced Mutagenesis Mohammad Imran Kozgar, Shaheen Hussain, Mohd Rafiq Wani and Samiullah Khan Chapter 12 Wheat Improvement: Historical Perspective and Mutational Approach-A Review Subzar Ahmad Sheikh, Mohd Rafiq Wani, Mohd Imran Kozgar and Parvaiz Ahmad Chapter 13 Cotton Leaf Curl Virus Disease Predictive Model Based on Environmental Variables Safdar Ali, M. Aslam Khan, Shahbaz Talib Sahi, M. Atiq, and A. Hannan Chapter 14 Transcription Factors in Abiotic Stress Responses -Their Potentials in Crop Improvement Xuan Lan Thi Hoang, Nguyen Binh Anh Thu, Nguyen Phuong Thao, and Lam-Son Phan Tran