Stress Biology in Plant Tissue Culture: Recent Advances

Conditions or factors in the environment that disrupt normal physiological processes and growth of plants that can be arise through any abiotic or biotic source, alone or in combination, can be considered as stress. Stress biology deals with the different physiological and molecular modifications plants undergo during various stresses. Understanding how plants respond to stress is essential for agriculture, horticulture, and environmental conservation efforts. Not all plants show similar type of response in similar environment rather they respond differently; therefore, to study the effect of any particular type of stress on plants, a large sets of experimental setups are needed, with precise conditions which cannot be provided by growth chamber, field, and green house. Tissue culture provides a controlled environment where specific stress factors, such as drought, salinity, temperature extremes, or chemical pollutants, heavy metals can be applied accurately and consistently to plant tissues and can be monitored by measuring their effects on plant growth and health. In recent decades, a large number of studies have been conducted on various types of stress under in vitro conditions in plants. Stress-tolerant plant varieties are developed by analyzing the plants under heat, cold, drought, and salinity stress under in vitro conditions. Pathways that are triggered by the stress conditions are also identified to certain extent by the various studies. An increased production of secondary metabolites was also reported in several studies, under some heavy metal stress in vitro conditions. Efforts are also made in the direction of phytoremediation and environmental assessment using in vitro approaches. In this chapter, we will discuss the recent advancements that are taking place in stress biology using the plant tissue culture techniques and the future prospects that should be integrated into it for a better understanding.