Abiotic stress and its amelioration in cereals and pulses: A review

Stress is any environmental condition that prevents the plant from achieving its full genetic potential and negative impact of non-living factors on living organisms in a specific environment is known as abiotic stress. Abiotic stresses are serious threats to agriculture and the environment which have been exacerbated in the current century by global warming and industrialization. Abiotic stress cause changes in soil–plant–atmosphere continuum which is responsible for reduced yield in several of the major crops in different parts of the world. It has been estimated that only 10 % of the arable land comes under non-stress environment and rest 90 % experiences one or other type of environmental stress. Although plants are competent enough to take well-concerted action at morphological, physiological, biochemical, and molecular level to adapt themselves to abiotic stresses, still efforts are required to ameliorate the ill effects of stress through genetic improvement, promotion of resource conservation technologies and other suitable strategies.