Root Related Abiotic Stresses and Climate Changes: Insights into a New Era

The changes in climate across the world are creating new challenges for agriculture. Crops better fitted to new environments need to be designed and developed. Among the many constraints that new crops will face are abiotic stresses such as flooding, drought, heat, cold and mineral toxicity. Our group has been using novel genomic technologies to identify candidate genes related to many abiotic stresses. One of such stresses, flooding, can create an environment leading to a chain of reactions that impose restrictions to plant growth. The study of iron homeostasis and ethylene response factors has allowed the identification of important genes involved in the response to this stress. In silico and functional analysis of such genes have provided new directions for the improvement of rice for iron toxicity and could be used to further improve other grasses through comparative genomics tools.