Editorial: Extremophiles: tolerance mechanisms and use in crop improvement
Makaleler > Editöre Mektup · 2023
Yazarlar: Rengin ÖZGÜR UZİLDAY, Showkat Ahmad Ganie
Frontiers in Plant Science, SCI Expanded İndekslerine Giren Dergi, Uluslararası, Wos, 2023, cilt 14, ss 1233202-1233202
DOI: 10.3389/fpls.2023.1233202
Özet
Extremophiles: tolerance mechanisms and use in crop improvement Climate change increases both the intensity and frequency of environmental stresses such as temperature extremes, drought, and salinity.However, the majority of crop plants are sensitive to these stresses and huge yield penalties occur when they are exposed to these sub-optimal conditions.Crop plants cannot grow in natural environments where the abiotic stresses are extreme such as deserts, saline and high metal soils, Arctic and Antarctic regions, etc.In contrast, the extremophile plants or extremophytes, including halophytes (growing in soils with high salinity), xerophytes (growing in dry and arid environments), resurrection plants (survive almost complete dehydration or desiccation even over years), metal hyperaccumulators (growing in soils or waters with extreme levels of metals and concentrate these metals in their living tissues), etc. have evolved to complete their life cycles in these marginal habitats and have developed various mechanisms to cope with these stresses at anatomical, physiological, biochemical, and molecular levels.It is thus important to understand these mechanisms in extremophiles and to use that knowledge in the improvement of stress tolerance-related traits in cultivated crops to maximize the land area for the crop cultivation.In fact, in the past few decades, especially after the development of NGS technologies, plant scientists have shown a great interest in understanding the molecular genetic background of tolerance mechanisms in these astonishing plants and in transferring this knowledge to cultivated crops.This is especially feasible in the case of crop species which are closely related to an extremophile(s).Despite these efforts, the research in this area is in its infancy and the current knowledge is not enough, which warrants more studies on the extremophiles.In this regard, this Research Topic aimed to collect studies related to deciphering stress tolerance mechanisms in extremophiles that have the potential to be used in the improvement of crop stress tolerance for safeguarding yield.Studies related to understanding novel tolerance mechanisms of extremophiles are of special importance since they form the fundamental knowledge required for crop improvement.Halophytes evolved to survive under extreme saline conditions and some even require saline conditions for their normal metabolic function.Comparative studies between halophytes and glycophytes (grow in low sodium ecosystems and are sensitive to high salinity) are widely conducted in recent years to reveal how halophytes tolerate extreme Frontiers in Plant Science frontiersin.