A wide variety of favorable or disadvantageous external conditions affect the growth, development
and productivity of plants. Plants cannot avoid adverse environmental conditions (such as soil salinity,
drought, heat, cold, flooding, heavy metal contamination, predators and pathogen infections) due
to their sessile nature. Nature¿s wrath in the form of various biotic and abiotic stress factors adversely
affect plant growth and productivity causing the loss of crop yield. These abiotic and biotic stress
factors are a threat for plants, prevent them from reaching their full genetic potential and limit crop
productivity worldwide. Stress cause injury, disease or aberrant physiology by imposing a constraint
or highly unpredictable fluctuations on regular metabolic patterns of plants. These fluctuations are
mainly associated with altered metabolic functions; one of those is either loss of or reduced synthesis
of photosynthetic pigments. This results in declined light harvesting and generation of reducing
powers, which are a source of energy for dark reactions of photosynthesis. Thus, this review article
describes some induced changes in morphological, physiological and pigments composition in
crops due to stresses and research progress in plant responses to abiotic stresses and biotic stresses
is summarized from the physiological level to the molecular level
