Chilling and Drought Stresses in Crop Plants: Implications, Cross Talk, and Potential Management Opportunities

Abstract

Plants face a combination of different abiotic stresses under field conditions which are lethal to plant growth and production. Simultaneous occurrence of chilling and drought stresses in plants due to the drastic and rapid global climate changes, can alter the morphological, physiological and molecular responses. Both these stresses adversely affect the plant growth and yields due to physical damages, physiological and biochemical disruptions, and molecular changes. In general, the co-occurrence of chilling and drought combination is even worse for crop production rather than an individual stress condition. Plants attain various common and different physiological and molecular protective approaches for tolerance under chilling and drought stresses. Nevertheless, plant responses to a combination of chilling and drought stresses are unique from those to individual stress. In the present review, we summarized the recent evidence on plant responses to chilling and drought stresses on shared as well as unique basis and tried to find a common thread potentially underlying these responses. We addressed the possible cross talk between plant responses to these stresses and discussed the potential management strategies for regulating the mechanisms of plant tolerance to drought and/or chilling stresses. To date, various novel approaches have been tested in minimizing the negative effects of combine stresses. Despite of the main improvements there is still a big room for improvement in combination of drought and chilling tolerance. Thus, future researches particularly using biotechnological and molecular approaches should be carried out to develop genetically engineered plants with enhanced tolerance against these stress factors.

Unique miRNAs and their targets in tomato leaf responding to combined drought and heat stress

“…Plant hormone is an important component in signal pathways, which plays a role in increasing plant tolerance to abiotic stress [25,26]. SPL2 targeted by miR156 family (sly-miR156a, sly-miR156a_stu, sly-miR156f-p5_ stu and sly-miR156e_mtr) were detected in drought vs control, which was involved in plant hormone signal transduction ( Supplementary Table S3).…”

Individual and concurrent effects of drought and chilling stresses on morpho-physiological characteristics and oxidative metabolism of maize cultivars

“…Water deficit and suboptimal temperature are adverse environmental factors that impose drastic effects on crop plants [2,22]. Maize is comparatively more sensitive to water scarcity and low temperature conditions at early growth stages than later [4,31,32,33].…”

“…Crop plants are often exposed to multiple abiotic stresses simultaneously of which concurrent effects of sub-optimal temperature and moisture deficit conditions are perhaps the most deleterious for plant growth [1,2,3]. Drought and chilling stresses cause substantial reduction in growth and yield attributes of plants by disturbing normal plant metabolism [2,4]. For instance, the sub-optimal temperature causes water deficiency in maize seedlings by substantial reduction in root water uptake coupled with leaves transpiration [5].…”

“…Conversely, drought-pretreatment induces the stomatal closure and decline the transpiration in maize [6]. Furthermore, Hussain et al, (2018) indicated that the drought and chilling stresses triggered the plant-water relations but these effects are possibly more detrimental under the simultaneous occurrence of these both factors [2]. However, the destructive effects of low temperature and water deficiency on the crop plants depend on the duration, nature and severity of stress and the plant developmental stages.…”

“…Most often, individual and/or concurrent drought and chilling stresses results in excessive production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) that cause structural and functional damage to cell and its constituent [2,11], whereas the degree of oxidative damage may be accelerated synergistically under combined drought and low temperature conditions [12,13,14].…”