Reactive oxygen species (ROS) management in engineered plants for abiotic stress tolerance

The global population is continuously increasing, and it is expected to be about 9 billion by 2050. However, the agriculturally important land area is decreasing due to urbanization and other developmental activities. Further, the crop loss due to several constraints such as salinity, drought, chilling stress, and high metal toxicity is significantly extended by the changing climatic conditions. The abiotic stresses pose additional burdens of oxidative stress in plants through excessive production of reactive oxygen species (ROS), which cause considerable damage to the cell biomolecules (nucleic acid and proteins). Therefore, understanding ROS production under stress and its scavenging machinery is very important to engineer plants to withstand the stress burden without much yield penalty.