To survive, plants must respond rapidly and effectively to various stress factors, including biotic and abiotic stresses. Salinity stress triggers the increase of cytosolic free Ca2+ concentration ([Ca2+]i) via Ca2+ influx across the plasma membrane, as well as bacterial flg22 and plant endogenous peptide Pep1. However, the interaction between abiotic stress-induced [Ca2+]i increases and biotic...

Abiotic stresses are major environmental factors that inhibit plant growth and development impacting crop productivity. GRAS transcription factors play critical and diverse roles in plant development and abiotic stress. In this study, SlGRAS40, a member of the tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) GRAS family, was functionally characterized. In wild-type (WT) tomato, SlGRAS40 was upregulated by abiotic...

Abiotic stresses such as salinity and metal contaminations are the major environmental stresses that adversely affect crop productivity worldwide. Crop responses and tolerance to abiotic stress are complex processes for which "-omic" approaches such as metabolomics is giving us a newest view of biological systems. The aim of the current research was to assess metabolic changes in lettuce (Lactu...

Crop productivity continues to decline due to a wide array of biotic and abiotic stresses. Salinity is one of the worst abiotic stresses, as it causes huge losses to crop yield each year. Kinetin (Kn) has been reported as plant growth regulator since long, but its role in improving plant growth and food quality under saline conditions through mediating phytohormonal cross-talk is poorly studied...

Pathogenesis-related (PR) proteins are expressed by virtually all plants in response to pathogen infection and, in many cases, in response to abiotic stresses as well and include the PR10 family. However, the precise roles of the PR10 protein family in abiotic stress responses are not clear. In this paper we report, for the first time, that the constitutive expression of a pea PR10 gene in Bras...

The plant G-protein network, comprising Gα, Gβ, and Gγ core subunits, regulates development, senses sugar, and mediates biotic and abiotic stress responses. Here, we report G-protein signalling in the salt stress response using two crop models, rice and maize. Loss-of-function mutations in the corresponding genes encoding the Gα subunit attenuate growth inhibition and cellular senescence caused...

Mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) cascades play pivotal roles in mediating biotic and abiotic stress responses. Cotton (Gossypium hirsutum) is the most important textile crop in the world, and often encounters abiotic stress during its growth seasons. In this study, a gene encoding a mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) was isolated from cotton, and designated as GhMPK17. The open read...

Avena fatua and Phalaris minor are narrow-leaved weeds that pose problems for many crops. In order to study the effects of sodium chloride (NaCl) and polyethylene glycol (PEG) on germination and initial seedling growth of Avena fatua and Phalaris minor, an experiment was conducted based on a completely randomized design with 4 replications under laboratory conditions during 2011-2012. Eight lev...

Abiotic stress limits seed germination, plant growth, flowering and fruit quality, causing economic decrease. Small Heat Shock Proteins (sHSPs) are chaperons with roles in stress tolerance. Herein, we report the functional characterization of a cytosolic class CI sHSP (OpsHSP18) from Opuntia streptacantha during seed germination in Arabidopsis thaliana transgenic lines subjected to different st...

Plants treated with chemical compounds can develop an enhanced capacity to resist long after being subjected to (a)biotic stress, a phenomenon known as priming. Evidence suggests that reactive oxygen species (ROS) and reactive nitrogen species (RNS) coordinately regulate plant stress responses to adverse environmental conditions; however, the mechanisms underlying this function remain unknown. ...