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Climate change is altering our environment, subjecting multiple agroecosystems worldwide to an increased frequency and intensity of abiotic stress conditions such as heat, drought, flooding, salinity, cold and/or their potential combinations. These stresses impact plant growth, yield and survival, causing losses of billions of dollars to agricultural productivity, and in extreme cases they lead to famine, migration and even wars. As the rate of change in our environment has dramatically accelerated in recent years, more research is urgently needed to discover and develop new ways and tools to increase the resilience of crops to different stress conditions. In this theme issue, new studies addressing the molecular, metabolic, and physiological responses of crops and other plants to abiotic stress challenges are discussed, as well as the potential to exploit these mechanisms in biotechnological applications aimed at preserving and/or increasing crop yield under our changing climate conditions. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Crops under stress: can we mitigate the impacts of climate change on agriculture and launch the ‘Resilience Revolution’?’
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Can autophagy enhance crop resilience to environmental stress?
Climate change imposes abiotic stress on plants, significantly threatening global agriculture and food security. This indicates a need to apply our understanding of plant stress responses to improve crop resilience to these threats. Stress damages critical cellular components such as mitochondria, chloroplasts and the endoplasmic reticulum. Left unmitigated, abiotic stress can lead to cell death, which typically decreases overall plant health and productivity. Autophagy is a catabolic process that maintains cellular homeostasis by degrading and recycling damaged and dysfunctional cell components and organelles. Importantly, autophagy promotes plant tolerance to a wide range of environmental stresses, and manipulation of autophagy may lead to improved stress resilience in crops. Here, we discuss recent advances in our understanding of how autophagy affects abiotic stress resistance. We discuss the function of autophagy in different abiotic stresses (including nutrient stress, salt stress, drought, heat, cold, hypoxia, light stress and combined stresses) and provide insights from functional and genome-wide transcriptomic studies. We also evaluate the potential to enhance crop survival and productivity in suboptimal environmental conditions by activating autophagy, emphasizing the importance of targeted manipulation of key genes involved in the autophagy pathway. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Crops under stress: can we mitigate the impacts of climate change on agriculture and launch the ‘Resilience Revolution’?’.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2040582
- PAR ID:
- 10677706
- Publisher / Repository:
- Royal Society
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
- Volume:
- 380
- Issue:
- 1927
- ISSN:
- 0962-8436
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2024.0245
