Effects of Water Stress on Germination and Growth of Wheat, Photosynthetic Efficiency and Accumulation of Metabolites

Especially over the last 100 years, our unbridled exploitation of the world’s natural resources has severely damaged its vegetation and has also resulted in worrying accumulations of in‐ dustrial wastes and greenhouse gases. Together, these have upset natural ecosystem balances and have created many environment and climatic problems, including rising temperatures, in‐ creasing desertification, serious soil loss, soil salinization and damaging accumulations of soil nitrogen [39, 31, 37]. In many nations, the recent increased incidences of severe drought and associated desertification are coming into especially sharp focus because of their sudden, long term and devastating consequences for the local human population.