Recent Trends in Biotechnology To Improve Cold Stress Tolerance in Horticultural Crops

Abstract

The changes in the pattern of gene expression and putative proteins synthesis are according to their response with environment when exposed to low temperatures. Thus, the adaptation mechanism of plants and their survival are strictly governed by the mode of the transcriptional changes happened within nucleic acids under adverse climatic conditions. In other cases, plant species of tropical or subtropical origin are severely affected by the temperatures just above the freezing point and displaying various symptoms of chilling injury and even died at final stage. But the same physiological fate is not observed in chilling tolerant species and they are able to grow under such extremities. Conventional breeding methods like inter-specific or inter-generic hybridization techniques have several limitations in reshaping the cold stress tolerance mechanisms in valuable horticultural crop plants. Recent advancement in whole genome editing/ sequencing, mutational response and plant analysis for transgenic development provide us in-depth knowledge of the complex transcriptional mechanism that mainly carried out under cold stress. Various inducible genes are hyperactive at adverse environmental condition and have the possibility to isolate from wild plant species. Most of them are playing key role in cold stress tolerance and the expression of few of them is regulated by C-repeat binding factor/ dehydration-responsive element binding transcription factors. Such defense mechanisms reveal that the cold resistance is more complex than perceived and involves through different pathways. These findings abridged in this review and shown potential practical applications for introducing cold tolerance in agricultural crops for domesticating them in temperate regions.