ABSTRACT
Plants encounter different environmental challenges in terms of biotic and abiotic stresses in the field. The multifaceted effect of abiotic stress negatively affects plant growth and productivity. Though plants have an intrinsic capacity to regulate stress, their yield and growth are still hampered. Several regions in the world depend on fresh water for agriculture. Moreover, with increasing population and fresh water scarcity, there is an urgent need to deploy an alternate method for agricultural sustainability and increase food yield. Since halophytes are naturally tolerant to high salinity and water-deficit conditions, they can be used as model plants to study tolerance mechanisms and as a genetic source to develop abiotic stress-tolerant crop varieties. Furthermore, use of genetic engineering of stress-responsive transcription factors, which can regulate an array of downstream genes, to develop stress-tolerant varieties is the best alternative solution to the current agricultural scenario. Both abscisic acid (ABA)-dependent and ABA-independent signal transduction pathways are involved in activating different transcription factors such as DREB/CBF, MYC/MYB and NAC, in addition to other TFs, for regulation of downstream genes. This chapter reviews the research progress made on isolation of stress-responsive transcription factors from halophytes and their overexpression to develop stress-tolerant plants.
