ABSTRACT
Perennial woody plants are subjected to a variety of stresses (both bi otic and abiotic) throughout the year. Cold winters, hot and dry sum mers, insect pests, and diseases-all take their toll on fruit trees, forest plantings, and especially those landscape trees and shrubs that grow in poor edaphic conditions of urban situations and/or are exposed to stress ful city microclimates. Woody plants are enormously important and beneficial to our well-being (as source of food, fiber, lumber, pulp, rec reation and visual aesthetics, just to name few). Therefore, we must gain fundamental understanding (at molecular level) of how these plants re spond to various stresses, and strive to develop tougher plants with im proved resistance to environmental stress and/or the strategies to protect them from stressful conditions.
