ABSTRACT
The abiotic stresses that plants is exposed to include drought, heat, salinity, ultraviolet light, flooding, gaseous pollution, freezing and heavy metals. In most of the sugarcane growing areas, the crop experiences moisture stress during formative and grand growth stages, which results in ultimate reduction of the stalk population, growth, and a yield loss of 30% to 50%. Sugarcane being a glycophyte shows high sensitivity to salinity at various growth stages. There are two stages of stresses that plants are exposed to under salinity. First is osmotic stress, the less availability of water molecules. This is the initial stage and prolonged osmotic stress leads to the second stage of ionic toxicity, in which the higher concentration of Na+ ions becomes toxic to plants. The MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of small, non-coding RNAs of approximately 21 nucleotides in length that are endogenous to both plants and animals.
