New approaches to improve crop tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses

During the last years, a great effort has been dedicated at the development and employment of diverse approaches for achieving more stress-tolerant and climate-flexible crops and sustainable yield increases to meet the food and energy demands of the future. The ongoing climate change is in fact leading to more frequent extreme events with a negative impact on food production, such as increased temperatures, drought, and soil salinization as well as invasive arthropod pests and diseases. In this review, diverse green strategies (e.g., chemical priming, root-associated microorganisms), and advanced technologies (e.g., genome editing, high-throughput phenotyping) are described on the basis of the most recent research evidence. Particularly, attention has been focused on the potential use in a context of sustainable and climate-smart agriculture (the so called next agriculture generation) to improve plant tolerance and resilience to abiotic and biotic stresses. In addition, the gap between the results obtained in controlled experiments and those from application of these technologies in real field conditions (lab to field step) is also discussed.

Automated summary

In recent years, efforts have been dedicated to developing diverse approaches to enhance stress tolerance and climate adaptability of crops in response to the negative impacts of climate change on food production. Through green strategies and advanced technologies, plant tolerance and resilience to various stresses can be improved. However, there is a gap between results obtained in controlled experiments and the application of these technologies in real field conditions.