ABSTRACT
Salinity stress and heavy metal stress are two of the most common abiotic stresses faced by plants, which can end up being debilitating, if not fatal, in the absence of proper tolerance and/or resistance mechanisms. While various stress-responsive signalling pathways, transcription factors and genes have been discussed in existing literature over the years, it has been recently discovered that RNAs transcribed from the non-protein coding stretches of the genome, commonly known as non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs), also play important roles in the alleviation of abiotic stress in plants. This chapter explores the roles of such ncRNAs, with special emphasis on microRNAs, small interfering RNAs and long non-coding RNAs, during abiotic stress conditions due to salt and heavy metals in plants.
