Plants and Environment

Changing environmental condition and global population demands understanding the plant responses to hostile environment. Significant progress has been made over the past few decades through amalgamation of molecular breeding with non-conventional breeding. Understanding the cellular and molecular mechanisms to stress tolerance has received considerable scientific scrutiny because of the uniqueness of such processes to plant biology, and also its importance in the campaign "Freedom From Hunger". The main intention of this publication is to provide a state-of-the-art and up-to-date knowledge of recent developments in understanding of plant responses to major abiotic stresses, limitations and the current status of crop improvement. A better insight will help in taking a multidisciplinary approach to address the issues affecting plant development and performance under adverse conditions. I trust this book will act as a platform to excel in the field of stress biology

Plant Physiology, Development and Metabolism

Water is one of the most important constituents of life. Chemically, water is the hydride of oxygen. Oxygen, being more electronegative, exerts a strong attractive pull on its electrons. This unequal attraction results in small positive charge on twohydrogenmoleculesandasmallnegativechargeontheoxygenmolecule.The two lone pairs of electrons of the oxygen molecule result in bending of water molecule. The partial charges on oxygen and hydrogen molecules result in high electric dipole moment and polarity of water molecule