Omics Approach to Manage Abiotic Stress in Cereals (eBook)

The edited book highlights various emerging Omics tools and techniques that are currently being used in the analysis of responses to different abiotic stress in agronomically important cereals and their applications in enhancing tolerance mechanism. Plants are severely challenged by diverse abiotic stress factors such as low water availability (drought), excess water (flooding/ waterlogging), extremes of temperatures (cold, chilling, frost, and heat), salinity, mineral deficiency, and heavy metal toxicity. Agronomically important cereal crops like Rice, Wheat, Maize, Sorghum, Pearl Millet, Barley, Oats, Rye, Foxtail Millets etc. that are the major sources of food material and nutritional components for human health are mostly exposed to abiotic stresses during the critical phases of flowering and grain yield. Different Omics platforms like genomics, transcriptomics proteomics, metabolomics and phenomics, in conjunction with breeding and transgenic technology, and high throughput technologies like next generation sequencing, epigenomics, genome editing and CRISPR-Cas technology have emerged altogether in understanding abiotic stress response and strengthening defense and tolerance mechanism of different cereals. This book is beneficial to different universities and research institutes working with different cereal crops in the areas of stress physiology, stress-associated genes and proteins, genomics, proteomics, genetic engineering, and other fields of molecular plant physiology. The book can also be used as advanced textbook for the course work of research and master's level students. It will be of use to people involved in ecological studies and sustainable agriculture. The proposed book bring together the global leaders working on environmental stress in different cereal crops and motivate scientists to explore new horizons in the relevant areas of research.

Dr. Aryadeep Roychoudhury is Assistant Professor at the Department of Biotechnology, St. Xavier's College (Autonomous), Kolkata, West Bengal, India. He received his B.Sc. (Hons.) in Botany from Presidency College, Kolkata, M.Sc. in Biophysics and Molecular Biology, University of Calcutta, and Ph.D. from Bose Institute, Kolkata, under Jadavpur University. Dr. Roychoudhury is currently handling several government-funded projects on abiotic stress responses in rice. He has published over 200 articles in peer-reviewed journals and as book chapters, and already edited 7 books from reputed publishers. He is the recipient of the Young Scientist Award 2019, conferred upon him by International Foundation for Environment and Ecology, and his name is included in the Stanford University List of World's Top 2% Scientists.

Dr. Tariq Aftab received his Ph.D. in the Department of Botany at Aligarh Muslim University, India, and is currently an Assistant Professor there. After completing his doctorate, he has worked as Research Fellow at National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources, New Delhi and as Post-doctorate Fellow at Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi, India. Dr. Aftab also worked as Visiting Scientist at Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK), Gatersleben, Germany, and in the Department of Plant Biology, Michigan State University, USA. He has edited a number of books with with international publishers, and published over 50 research papers in international journals.

 Prof. Krishnendu Acharya is former Head, Department of Botany, University of Calcutta. He obtained his master's degree in Botany from University of Calcutta, M.Tech. in Biotechnology and Ph.D. from Jadavpur University. His career has been marked by numerous awards and achievements. His name has been included in the Stanford List of World's Top 2% Scientists. He has established his research career in diverse fields which involves Macrofungai diversity and medicinal prospects; Innate immunity in plants and Myco-nanotechnology. He has a research experience of over 25 years with more than 350 research publications, 6 books and 4 (3 Applied) patents.

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The edited book highlights various emerging Omics tools and techniques that are currently being used in the analysis of responses to different abiotic stress in agronomically important cereals and their applications in enhancing tolerance mechanism. Plants are severely challenged by diverse abiotic stress factors such as low water availability (drought), excess water (flooding/ waterlogging), extremes of temperatures (cold, chilling, frost, and heat), salinity, mineral deficiency, and heavy metal toxicity. Agronomically important cereal crops like Rice, Wheat, Maize, Sorghum, Pearl Millet, Barley, Oats, Rye, Foxtail Millets etc. that are the major sources of food material and nutritional components for human health are mostly exposed to abiotic stresses during the critical phases of flowering and grain yield. Different Omics platforms like genomics, transcriptomics proteomics, metabolomics and phenomics, in conjunction with breeding and transgenic technology, and high throughput technologies like next generation sequencing, epigenomics, genome editing and CRISPR-Cas technology have emerged altogether in understanding abiotic stress response and strengthening defense and tolerance mechanism of different cereals. This book is beneficial to different universities and research institutes working with different cereal crops in the areas of stress physiology, stress-associated genes and proteins, genomics, proteomics, genetic engineering, and other fields of molecular plant physiology. The book can also be used as advanced textbook for the course work of research and master's level students. It will be of use to people involved in ecological studies and sustainable agriculture. The proposed book bring together the global leaders working on environmental stress in different cereal crops and motivate scientists to explore new horizons in the relevant areas of research.