ABSTRACT
Abiotic stress factors such as high light, UV, heat, cold, drought, flooding, salt, and heavy metals impair cellular structures and disrupt the physiological functions of plants leading to growth perturbation, reduced fertility, premature senescence, and yield losses. Plants respond to stressful environmental conditions at hormonal, transcriptional, biochemical, physiological, and morphological levels. Both low temperatures and heat stress can seriously affect plant growth and development. Heat stress due to increased temperature is also a serious agricultural problem in many areas of the world. Drought stress induces water loss and changes in the osmotic homeostasis, as well as the loss of turgidity in plant cells, which affects membrane tension perceived through changes in the activity of mechanosensitive ion channels, like calcium channels. There are numerous studies pointing out the fact that the exogenous application of jasmonates shows increases in salt stress tolerance.
