In the changing climate scenarios, living organisms have been facing several
biotic and abiotic stresses. Abiotic stresses are the major factors posing huge threats to
plants. Drought, heat, and salinity are bigger problems emerging in the world due to
climate change. For adapting various climatic conditions, plants trigger several
biochemical and molecular mechanisms. At the biochemical level, secondary
metabolites play an important role in the survival of plants in uneven situations.
Modulation of expression of genes and stress response elements is observed under
stress. To cope with abiotic stresses in medicinal plants, the understanding of the
biochemical and molecular mechanisms is very important. The use of modern
biotechnological approaches along with conventional breeding may be helpful in
developing tolerance against abiotic stresses in medicinal plants. This chapter
highlights various abiotic stresses, their mechanisms and strategies to develop tolerance
against these stresses.
Keywords: Abiotic stress, Adenine base editor, Biotechnological approaches, CRISPR/Cas, Drought, Homologous recombination, Light, Pentatricopeptide repeat proteins, RNA interference zinc finger nucleases (ZFNs), Site-directed sequence editing, Salt stress, Secondary metabolites, Temperature, Transcription activator-like effector nuclease(TALENS), Ultraviolet.
