ABSTRACT
As sessile organisms, plants continuously need to adjust to environmental challenges. To survive in this hostile environment, plants possess an array of regiments to defend themselves. For example, to combat invasion effectively by a great variety of microbial pathogens, or simultaneous invasion by multiple aggressors, plants have evolved sophisticated strategies to monitor microbial populations and effi ciently adapt to changes in their complex unfriendly environment. Furthermore, prolonged exposure of plant species to abiotic stresses, an integral part of “climate change”, results in altered metabolism and damage to biomolecules. Plants evolve intricate defense mechanisms to adapt these stresses by upregulation of osmolytes, osmoprotectants, enzymatic and non-enzymatic antioxidants, etc. All these responsive capacity is highly fl exible and implicates a complex network of interactions between the different layers of the defense mechanism and/ or adaptive process.
