Plant Stress Biology To Mitigate the Effects of Climate Change

Environmental degradation and climate change have become severe global problems because of the explosive population increases and global industrialization. Moreover, food production will be restricted by the reduction of arable land because of the rapid climate changes and desertification. How we can contribute to solve these difficult problems based on science and technology? One of the keys is plant stress biology and biotechnology based on functional genomics. Plant stress biology is thought to provide a key technology for breeding of crops and trees that can tolerate drought conditions. Water use efficiency of crops can be improved by the application of stress biology in breeding. For the development of these technologies, we need to understand plant responses to drought stress at the molecular level, since higher plants respond to drought stress through various molecular and cellular processes as well as physiological processes.

In this presentation, I will describe recent progress on various functions of stress-inducible genes in a model plant, Arabidopsis thaliana, and their application to the development of drought tolerant plants. Arabidopsis genome sequence was determined in 2000. Based on its genome analysis, a lot of genes have been identified that are involved in drought stress responses and tolerance. Similar genes have been also found in rice, soybean, corn and other crops and trees because their genome sequences were also determined and compared with the Arabidopsis genome. Recently, many plant biologists have been trying to develop drought-resistant crops, such as maize, rice, wheat and soybean by using these stress-inducible genes in combination with their promoters by transgenic technology. Moreover, genome sequence information has contributed to discover useful QTL markers involved in stress tolerance. Marker assisted breeding also provides us powerful tool to develop drought tolerant crops. Plant biotechnology based on genomics and transgenic technology has great potential to solve major problems related to food production and environment caused by global warming.