Abiotic Stress-Induced Epigenetic Modifications in Plants

Plants are constantly exposed to various unfavourable environmental conditions, which drive them to adopt several survival strategies including epigenetic modifications. These modifications correlate with the expression of genes via transcriptional regulation deprived of altering the DNA sequences. Stress tolerance in plants is significantly conferred by epigenetic changes including small RNA-mediated silencing, histone alterations, and DNA methylation. These modifications also facilitate long-term stress tolerance adaptation via persistent gene regulation or transgenerational inheritance. Various advantageous traits in crop improvement are governed by the heritable epigenetic changes as epialleles. Recently, many studies emphasized the mechanism and regulation of epigenetic modifications adopted by plants in response to different stress. These modifications play an important role in governing stress tolerance, acclimatization, adaptation, and evolution practices. This chapter emphasizes the abiotic stress-induced epigenetic modifications and their regulation in plants. Further, the exploration of epigenetic changes leading to the production of stress-tolerant crops is also discussed.