Annals of Applied Biology ISSN 0003-4746

E D I T O R I A L

Research on abiotic and biotic stress – what next?R.A. Azevedo1 & P.J. Lea2

1 Departamento de Genetica, Escola Superior de Agricultura Luiz de Queiroz, Universidade de Sao Paulo, Piracicaba, SP, Brazil

2 Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4AP, UK

CorrespondenceR.A. Azevedo, Departamento de Genetica,

Escola Superior de Agricultura Luiz de Queiroz,

Universidade de Sao Paulo, Piracicaba, SP,

Brazil.

Email: raazeved@esalq.usp.br

Received: 18 July 2011; revised version

accepted: 2 August 2011.

doi:10.1111/j.1744-7348.2011.00500.x

Due to the presence of a wide range of different formsof environmental pollution, there is no argument thatagricultural productivity is subject to major challenges ona daily basis (Brown & Funk, 2008; Turner et al., 2009;Davies et al., 2011; Hatfield et al., 2011). Not only is thekey goal of increasing food production under threat (Parry& Lea, 2009), but also ecological, social and other aspectsthat are separate from Science and Technology have to beconsidered and addressed so that we can respond quicklyand efficiently with new ideas.

Annals of Applied Biology has received a large number ofsubmitted manuscripts in the last few years, which havedescribed the effects of abiotic and biotic stresses on plantgrowth and development, although only a small numberof more comprehensive papers have been accepted andpublished (Gratao et al., 2008; Jin et al., 2009; Macia-Vicente et al., 2009; Rios et al., 2009; Stein et al., 2009;Teixeira & Carvalho, 2009; Vallino et al., 2009; Bernsteinet al., 2010; Cartes et al., 2010; Castillejo et al., 2010;Soccio et al., 2010). It has become obvious to us thatthe contributions have been limited to certain aspects inthe field, the large majority concentrating on standardphysiological and biochemical analyses, which does notnecessarily mean that there is no room for such type ofstudies (Azevedo et al., 2011). Arruda & Azevedo (2009)have already proposed that new techniques used for theanalysis of metals should not be restricted to chemicalresearch, but that they could also be used to help inincreasing our understanding of a wide range of biologicaland environmental problems caused by heavy metals.

A quick search of the literature reveals that the annualnumber of papers published on stress physiology in plantshas increased by almost three-fold over the last 10 years.

Such a search also reveals that there has been a lot ofrepetition, with the majority of papers employing similarexperimental procedures and analytical techniques.

Studies aimed at obtaining more information on theeffects of different environments on genetic variationare needed, if there is to be further progress towardsbreeding for stress tolerance. The mapping of quantita-tive trait loci (QTL) is of considerable value (Courtoiset al., 2009; Reynolds et al., 2009; Jagadish et al., 2010,2011), if the QTL × environment interaction is to bebetter understood. For example, two significant and twoputative quantitative QTL for root density and 28 QTLfor drought avoidance were identified in a mapping pop-ulation of upland rice (Cairns et al., 2009). Norton et al.(2009) provided a nice example of the study of environ-mental and genetic control of arsenic accumulation andspeciation in rice grains. The same group also carried outgenetic mapping of the rice ionome in both leaves andgrain, identifying QTL for 17 elements including arsenic,cadmium, iron and selenium (Norton et al., 2010).

Proteomic studies can also provide important infor-mation on stress responses (Afroz et al., 2011; Bandehaghet al., 2011). For instance, Castillejo et al. (2010) describeda two-dimensional gel electrophoresis based proteomicstudy of the Medicago truncatula–Uromyces striatus inter-action, in which the induction of proteins involved indefence mechanisms during the early stages of infectionwere identified, and can now be further investigated.Similarly, Sengupta et al. (2011) have very recently iden-tified 9 major proteins that were upregulated and 11 thatwere downregulated during short-term water stress in theroots of Vigna radiata. The involvement of sulphur andin particular glutathione metabolism in the response to

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Abiotic and biotic stresses R.A. Azevedo & P.J. Lea

cadmium has also been confirmed by proteomic studies(Kieffer et al., 2008; Alvarez et al., 2009).

Further comprehensive research on stress signallingis long overdue, and we hope to see more manuscriptsbeing submitted and published in Annals of Applied Biology.The same is also true for papers using bioinformatics(Reumann, 2010) and molecular genetics (Ghelfi et al.,2011). The use of specific transgenic and mutant plants(Liu et al., 2011; Monteiro et al., 2011; Osakabe et al.,2011) will continue to be extremely important in thisfield. However, perhaps the most promising way forfuture research, is to exploit a systems biology approach,by using inter-disciplinary studies to understand thecomplex stress responses of plants (Ahuja et al., 2010;Keurentjes et al., 2011; Pritchard & Birch, 2011).

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