Morphological and Physiological Responses of Plants Under Temperature Stress and Underlying Mechanisms

During evolution, plants are exposed to a wide range of beneficial and detrimental environmental conditions. Among these, temperature stress could retard plant growth and development, and even threaten survival. In agriculture, due to temperature stress, crop yield might be reduced remarkably and consequently damage food security. Fortunately, to mitigate these losses, plants have evolved various mechanisms for adaptation, avoidance and acclimatization to overcome temperature stress. For example, chilling or freezing injury can lead to the disruption of many physiological processes in plants, e.g., water status, photosynthesis, respiration, and even most of the metabolism, and thus, various adaptative mechanisms could be activated in plants to avoid damage by the ice crystal formation or other chilling damages. These temperature-stress-tolerant mechanisms for high-temperature stress, cold stress, chilling injury, and freezing injury have been intensively revealed by researchers, and this present chapter attempts to summarize them systematically.

Keywords: Cold Stress, Chilling Injury, Cold Tolerance, Freezing Injury, High-Temperature Stress, Heat Tolerance