Biological Approaches for Assessment and Management of abiotic stress for Resilient Agriculture

Abstract

The impact of abiotic stresses such as extreme temperatures, drought, water logging,
high salinity, heavy metal toxicity, limiting crop productivity and sustainability are being
witnessed all over the world. In order to sustain crop productivity, it is therefore crucial to
establish simple and low cost technology for abiotic stress management. Natural resource
management strategies can play a significant role, in this respect, as it has strong influence
on soil resistance to check deterioration of soil health through selective influence on microbes
and its functional attributes. These selective attributes are the indicator of soil resistance to
different stresses. Identification of resistant microbes to extreme environments and their
successful deployment in rhizosphere can be another significant approach to induce systemic
resistance in plants to sustain productivity under stressful environment. However, extensive
research for development of the technology and its assessment under diverse agro-ecological
condition should be accomplished before recommendation. This paper reviews the literatures
on impact of abiotic stress on agriculture, different aspects of soil resistance and resilience,
its assessment and management strategies to combat the upcoming stress for resilient
Agriculture. Till now, a lot of work on soil resistance to stress has been accomplished. So far
soil physical and chemical attributes were given priority to assess the resistance capacity of
a soil to different stresses, in general, compaction, water logging, nutrient toxicity etc., in
particular. The dynamic soil characteristics such as microbial community structure and soil
specific functions, in general, enzymes activities are known to respond more quickly to
changing environmental conditions and crop management practices than total or available
soil organic carbon or other available soil nutrients. Therefore, use of microbes and their
enzymes systems as well as soil functional attributes are current leads to asses soil resistance
to abiotic stress, which results in deterioration of soil health and ultimately to poor crop
quality.