During evolution, plants are exposed to a wide range of beneficial and
detrimental environmental conditions. Among these, temperature stress could retard
plant growth and development, and even threaten survival. In agriculture, due to
temperature stress, crop yield might be reduced remarkably and consequently damage
food security. Fortunately, to mitigate these losses, plants have evolved various
mechanisms for adaptation, avoidance and acclimatization to overcome temperature
stress. For example, chilling or freezing injury can lead to the disruption of many
physiological processes in plants, e.g., water status, photosynthesis, respiration, and
even most of the metabolism, and thus, various adaptative mechanisms could be
activated in plants to avoid damage by the ice crystal formation or other chilling
damages. These temperature-stress-tolerant mechanisms for high-temperature stress,
cold stress, chilling injury, and freezing injury have been intensively revealed by
researchers, and this present chapter attempts to summarize them systematically.
Keywords: Cold Stress, Chilling Injury, Cold Tolerance, Freezing Injury, High-Temperature Stress, Heat Tolerance
