Abiotic Stress in Plants: An Overview
1
Pooja Baweja and Gaurav Kumar
Abstract
Various abiotic stress factors affect plants negatively, affecting their growth and
development. These stress factors can be natural or anthropogenic and may have
short-term or long-term effects on vegetation. Due to stress, many changes occur
in plants, which may be reversible or irreversible and even cause acute damage.
The abiotic stress factors are considered as one of the major factors for crop loss
worldwide. Plants avoid such stress factors either by acclimatization or by
avoidance and have with various defence mechanisms. In this chapter, authors
have summarized the effects of temperature, drought, flood, light, and heavy
metals as abiotic stress factors on plants along with the molecular mechanisms
and signal transduction during such stresses.
Keywords
Abiotic stress · Temperature stress · Heavy metals stress · Salinity stress · Light
stress · Signal transduction
1.1
Introduction
Plants are generally exposed to extremes of biotic and abiotic environmental factors,
which have become the integral part of their life cycle too. For its optimum growth a
plant requires carbon, energy, light, mineral nutrients, and water. Whenever any of
P. Baweja
Department of Botany, Maitreyi College, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India
G. Kumar (*)
Department of Environmental Studies, PGDAV College, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India
# The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte
Ltd. 2020
B. Giri, M. P. Sharma (eds.), Plant Stress Biology,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-9380-2_1
1
1
Pooja Baweja and Gaurav Kumar
Abstract
Various abiotic stress factors affect plants negatively, affecting their growth and
development. These stress factors can be natural or anthropogenic and may have
short-term or long-term effects on vegetation. Due to stress, many changes occur
in plants, which may be reversible or irreversible and even cause acute damage.
The abiotic stress factors are considered as one of the major factors for crop loss
worldwide. Plants avoid such stress factors either by acclimatization or by
avoidance and have with various defence mechanisms. In this chapter, authors
have summarized the effects of temperature, drought, flood, light, and heavy
metals as abiotic stress factors on plants along with the molecular mechanisms
and signal transduction during such stresses.
Keywords
Abiotic stress · Temperature stress · Heavy metals stress · Salinity stress · Light
stress · Signal transduction
1.1
Introduction
Plants are generally exposed to extremes of biotic and abiotic environmental factors,
which have become the integral part of their life cycle too. For its optimum growth a
plant requires carbon, energy, light, mineral nutrients, and water. Whenever any of
P. Baweja
Department of Botany, Maitreyi College, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India
G. Kumar (*)
Department of Environmental Studies, PGDAV College, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India
# The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte
Ltd. 2020
B. Giri, M. P. Sharma (eds.), Plant Stress Biology,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-9380-2_1
1