Horticultural crops tackling stresses: genetic and epigenetic alterations

Abstract

Food is indispensable for fulfilling the nutritional requirements of living beings. The principal source of food, nutrition and feed are horticultural commodities. Grains, pulses, fruits, vegetables, flowers, ornamental plants and medicinal plants are just a few of the important horticulture crops that are widely grown as cash crops by farmers and to meet these needs. However, eventually, horticulture crops are facing major challenges to enhance the productivity of field crops due to changes in environmental conditions. Crops are affected by many environmental stresses including both biotic as well as abiotic. Environmental stresses affect the overall growth, development, physiology and metabolism of plants which leads to the loss of crop quality produce and yield. Old approaches to decipher the mechanism of stress management and overall improvement in plants are involved with tedious experiments, long breeding programs and different cultivation environments. With the advancement in the field of bioinformatics and next-generation sequencing technologies, it has become possible to study the molecular mechanisms of plants coping with stresses. It is the need of the hour to investigate the mechanism of stress tolerance in economically important horticultural crops. This area has sought the attention of horticulturists as many regions are under the spell of environmental alterations and climate change. Thus, this review takes up the genetic and epigenetic aspects of stress management in high-value horticultural fruit and vegetable plants.