Translational Biology Approaches to Improve Abiotic Stress Tolerance in Crops

In the last decades several genes that regulate abiotic stress response were identified in the model plant Arabidopsis. The completion of the Arabidopsis genome sequence in 2000, and the development of molecular high throughput 'omics' platforms that allow the processing of several samples has speed up the simultaneous functional characterization of genes that regulate the abiotic stress tolerance in plants. The fundamental molecular mechanisms that underlie the plant abiotic responses are quite conserved among plant species therefore the knowledge gained in the model plant Arabidopsis can be exploited to improve stress tolerance in crop plants. Many examples demonstrate that ectopic expression of key genes involved in the stress response can induce stress tolerance in different crops demonstrating the potential of the translational approaches. Nevertheless the generation of crops that have improved tolerance in field conditions is still a challenge. However the omics approach in crop species can certainly contribute in the understanding of the interplay between response pathways to different abiotic stresses, condition that is found in typical open fields.