ABSTRACT
The ever increasing concentration of heavy metals in the environment causes serious disorder in ecological balance that is manifesting in decreasing the growth and productivity of plants. The world’s scientists are developing strategies to cope up with this heavy metal stress episode. In this concern OMICS approach has proven to be a panacea that includes an elaborative approach to study metal stress tolerance in plants. It elucidates the plant genes for metal tolerance by studying the constitutive gene over-expression in response to heavy metals and thus in the identification of metal tolerant genes. However, antioxidant enzymes play an important role in metal tolerance response thus, identification of genes involved in metal stress tolerance is carried via genetic screens, also real-time analysis of antioxidant enzymes is essential for further researches. At the same time recent studies report, the important role of microRNAs in heavy metal stress tolerance as well as epigenetic changes such as DNA methylation that are carried forward in next generations conferring metal stress tolerance in plants. In addition to above mentioned aspects, heavy metal stress-mediated MAPK signaling response against heavy metal stress in plants also becomes a matter of concern during tolerance strategies of plants. Therefore, keeping the above facts into consideration this chapter is an attempt to elucidate the current omics approaches towards plant tolerance against heavy metal stress.
