ABSTRACT
Essential oils obtained from plants are commercially important as they are utilized in perfume industry, drugs and many other cosmetic products. Plants produce these oils naturally but the amount of oil production varies depending on the environmental factors, which could precisely be mentioned as biotic or abiotic factors to which these plants are routinely exposed. Abiotic stress causes detrimental effects on the growth and yield of plants. Plants, as immobile organisms, have adjusted in the course of their evolution and developed well organized strategies of responses to avoid, tolerate or adapt to different types of stresses. The multiple stress factors that plants have to overcome often activate similar cell signaling pathways and cellular responses, such as the production of stress proteins, upregulation of the antioxidant machinery and accumulation of compatible solutes. The initial consideration is to understand the production of plants under stress and also to identify strategies to improve stress tolerance. Over the last few decades, advances in plant physiology, genetics and molecular biology have greatly improved our understanding of plant responses to abiotic stress conditions. In this chapter, we will discuss the role of abiotic stress in plants, the recent progresses on routine analyses of plant responses to stress including genomics, proteomics and metabolomics and also the recent discovery of microRNAs that regulate gene expression which adds another level of complexity to our understanding of abiotic stress tolerance.
