ABSTRACT
Worldwide, a major loss in agriculture is due to abiotic stresses including cold, ultraviolet radiation, drought, heat, salinity, and flooding. Recently, producing more crop yields without loss in agriculture to feed the increasing population has gained significant importance. However, agricultural areas are facing many abiotic stresses, especially due to global warming, which are produced by human interventions. We evaluate the artificial mechanisms for the development of plants’ internal systems to alleviate the stresses levels and adjust their growth under different severe environmental stress conditions, especially drought, which hold vital importance. Recent findings have revealed that plant hormones such as IAA (auxin), CKs (cytokinins), ET (ethylene), GAs (Gibberellins) and many new groups such as JA (jasmonates), STs (strigolactones) and BRs (brassionosteriods) may provide the evidence to be significant in the metabolic mechanisms in drought tolerance. In this chapter, we briefly evaluate the functions of plant hormones which act as significant components in plant growth and development and produce resistance in drought stress response as well as their production for deliberating tolerance against abiotic stress in genetically modified crops. Similarly, studies also elucidate new findings about the functions of phytohormones in different stress conditions. The present comprehensive study will explain the current progress and prospects with challenges and limitations of plant hormone engineering for producing drought tolerance in plants.
