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Preface

appropriate strains of root-colonizing, non-pathogenic, plant growth-

promoting bacteria and plant inoculation with such microbial consortium

has been found to provide cross-protection against multiple environmental

stressors like drought, salinity, and metal toxicity and enhance the efficacy of

phytoremediation of inorganic and organic pollutants.

Genetic and biotechnological methods have been developed over time

immemorial to develop stress-tolerant plants. Advanced conventional

breeding strategies are required to expedite the generation of stress-tolerant

varieties. Such strategies heavily rely on certain pillars like large mapping

populations in the form of recombinant inbred lines, double haploids, and

near-isogenic lines, marker-assisted selection, marker-trait association,

mapping software, and identification of genes by linkage mapping and

quantitative trait loci. The introduction of a single gene or gene pyramiding

with multiple genes via transgenic technology, is always a widely opted

approach by scientists to develop stress-resilient plants. The transgenic

approach allows the identification of the target genes, transcription factors,

and microRNAs, providing an integrated knowledge of the physiological

and molecular mechanism of stress tolerance. Recent developments in omics

approaches and systems biology, coupled with next-generation sequencing

(NGS), epigenomics, and CRISPR/Cas technology, also have a high implica­

tion in the future in developing climate-resilient plants. Omics platforms like

genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics have provided

an opportunity to gather a holistic knowledge of stress-mediated regula­

tion for plant defense. Systems biology coordinates the information from

various high throughput omics tools, thereby enabling us to comprehend the

mechanism of plant response. Small RNA (siRNA and miRNA) technology

acts as a nodal player of plant development at both post-transcriptional and

transcriptional levels by regulating gene expression and combating various

abiotic stresses. The noncoding RNAs and their putative target genes

show differential expression patterns during stress, implying epigenetic

regulation of noncoding RNA expression. Apart from DNA methylation,

post-transcriptional RNA modifications are also regarded as plant epigenetic

regulators. Targeting the regulatory or structural genes or cis-regulatory

sequences and creating novel QTL through robust genome editing tools

like CRISPR/Cas9 has allowed a rapid and precise modification of any

organism at the nucleotide level. Another emerging field is nanotechnology,

where nanoparticle application has highly improved plant performance by

improving the free radical scavenging and antioxidant potential during stress

and has revolutionized the agricultural sector.