Changes in epigenetic features in legumes under abiotic stresses

Epigenetic Modifications of Hormonal Signaling Pathways in Plant Drought Response and Tolerance for Sustainable Food Security

Drought significantly challenges global food security, necessitating a comprehensive understanding of plant molecular responses for effective mitigation strategies. Epigenetic modifications, such as DNA methylation and histone modifications, are key in regulating genes and hormones essential for drought response. While microRNAs (miRNAs) primarily regulate gene expression post-transcriptionally, they can also interact with epigenetic pathways as potential effectors that influence chromatin remodeling. Although the role of miRNAs in epigenetic memory is still being explored, understanding their contribution to drought response requires examining these indirect effects on epigenetic modifications. A key aspect of this exploration is epigenetic memory in drought-adapted plants, offering insights into the transgenerational inheritance of adaptive traits. Understanding the mechanisms that govern the maintenance and erasure of these epigenetic imprints provides nuanced insights into how plants balance stability and flexibility in their epigenomes. A major focus is on the dynamic interaction between hormonal pathways-such as those for abscisic acid (ABA), ethylene, jasmonates, and salicylic acid (SA)-and epigenetic mechanisms. This interplay is crucial for fine-tuning gene expression during drought stress, leading to physiological and morphological adaptations that enhance plant drought resilience. This review also highlights the transformative potential of advanced technologies, such as bisulfite sequencing and CRISPR-Cas9, in providing comprehensive insights into plant responses to water deficit conditions. These technologies pave the way for developing drought-tolerant crops, which is vital for sustainable agriculture.

Multi-Omics Pipeline and Omics-Integration Approach to Decipher Plant's Abiotic Stress Tolerance Responses

The present day's ongoing global warming and climate change adversely affect plants through imposing environmental (abiotic) stresses and disease pressure. The major abiotic factors such as drought, heat, cold, salinity, etc., hamper a plant's innate growth and development, resulting in reduced yield and quality, with the possibility of undesired traits. In the 21st century, the advent of high-throughput sequencing tools, state-of-the-art biotechnological techniques and bioinformatic analyzing pipelines led to the easy characterization of plant traits for abiotic stress response and tolerance mechanisms by applying the 'omics' toolbox. Panomics pipeline including genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, epigenomics, proteogenomics, interactomics, ionomics, phenomics, etc., have become very handy nowadays. This is important to produce climate-smart future crops with a proper understanding of the molecular mechanisms of abiotic stress responses by the plant's genes, transcripts, proteins, epigenome, cellular metabolic circuits and resultant phenotype. Instead of mono-omics, two or more (hence 'multi-omics') integrated-omics approaches can decipher the plant's abiotic stress tolerance response very well. Multi-omics-characterized plants can be used as potent genetic resources to incorporate into the future breeding program. For the practical utility of crop improvement, multi-omics approaches for particular abiotic stress tolerance can be combined with genome-assisted breeding (GAB) by being pyramided with improved crop yield, food quality and associated agronomic traits and can open a new era of omics-assisted breeding. Thus, multi-omics pipelines together are able to decipher molecular processes, biomarkers, targets for genetic engineering, regulatory networks and precision agriculture solutions for a crop's variable abiotic stress tolerance to ensure food security under changing environmental circumstances.

Effect of Low Water Availability on Seed Yield and Seed Quality of Basil (Ocimum basilicum)

Basil (Ocimum basilicum L.) is an aromatic and medicinal plant with important properties and is used as an alternative crop in many countries of the world because of its medicinal, economic, industrial, and nutritional importance. The objective of the present study was to determine the effect of low water availability on seed production and seed quality of five cultivars of basil (Mrs Burns, Cinnamon, Sweet, Red Rubin, and Thai). Irrigation levels and cultivars affected seed yield and thousand seed weight. In addition, plants that were exposed to low water availability produced seeds that germinated in a greater percentage. Additionally, root length was increased as the PEG concentration was increased in the germination solution and was affected by the low water availability of the mother plants. The length of the shoot, the length of the root and the seed vigor could not be used as indicators of low water availability on the mother plants, but these characteristics and especially the seed vigor could be used as indicators of low water availability of the seed. Furthermore, the root length and the seed vigor indicated that there is a possibility of an epigenetic effect of water availability on the seed produced under low water availability, though more work is needed.