ABSTRACT
Climate change is an inevitable phenomenon that is projected to be experienced by all living creatures on planet Earth. Climatic change will be preceded by a cascade of fluctuating events, which won't be limited to elevated temperature, salinity, infrequent rainfall, followed by drought and elevated CO2 and light. In such dynamic conditions, plants would be most severely affected due to their sessile nature. In addition to climate change, the ever-increasing human population is further threatening food security. All this necessitates the development of climate-smart crops that can sustain an aberrant climate and environmental challenges with the fewest yield penalties possible. Plant non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) have emerged as key regulators of plant responses to climate change and environmental stresses. These tiny regulatory RNA molecules are taking center-stage and are being hailed as potent candidates for engineering climate-resilience in crop plants. Therefore, for exploiting these unexplored entities, it is crucial to identify and functionally characterize them using high-throughput and transgenic techniques. This chapter covers current understandings and recent updates on various approaches and tools used in the identification and characterization of plant ncRNAs.
