Prospects for utilising plant-adaptive mechanisms to improve wheat and other crops in drought- and salinity-prone environments

Breeding for adaptation to abiotic stress is extremely challenging due to the complexity of the target environments as well as that of the stress-adaptive mechanisms adopted by plants. While many traits have been reported in the literature, these must be considered with respect to the type of environment for which a cultivar is targeted. In theory, stress-adaptive traits can be divided into groups whose genes and/or physiological effects are...