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Biotic and Abiotic Stress Responses in Crop Plants agronomy Biotic and Abiotic Stress Responses in Crop Plants Edited by Thomas Dresselhaus and Ralph Hückelhoven Printed Edition of the Special Issue Published in Agronomy www.mdpi.com/journal/agronomy Biotic and Abiotic Stress Responses in Crop Plants Biotic and Abiotic Stress Responses in Crop Plants Special Issue Editors Thomas Dresselhaus Ralph H ¨uckelhoven MDPI • Basel • Beijing • Wuhan • Barcelona • Belgrade Special Issue Editors Thomas Dresselhaus Ralph Huckelhoven¨ University of Regensburg Technical University of Munich Germany Germany Editorial Office MDPI St. Alban-Anlage 66 4052 Basel, Switzerland This is a reprint of articles from the Special Issue published online in the open access journal Agronomy (ISSN 2073-4395) in 2018 (available at: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/agronomy/special issues/ biotic abiotic stress responses crop plants#) For citation purposes, cite each article independently as indicated on the article page online and as indicated below: LastName, A.A.; LastName, B.B.; LastName, C.C. Article Title. Journal Name Year, Article Number, Page Range. ISBN 978-3-03897-463-5 (Pbk) ISBN 978-3-03897-464-2 (PDF) Cover image courtesy of Kevin Begcy. The image shows a semi-sterile maize cob fertilized with heat-stressed pollen. c 2019 by the authors. Articles in this book are Open Access and distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which allows users to download, copy and build upon published articles, as long as the author and publisher are properly credited, which ensures maximum dissemination and a wider impact of our publications. The book as a whole is distributed by MDPI under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND. Contents About the Special Issue Editors ..................................... vii Preface to ”Biotic and Abiotic Stress Responses in Crop Plants” .................. ix Thomas Dresselhaus and Ralph H ¨uckelhoven Biotic and Abiotic Stress Responses in Crop Plants Reprinted from: Agronomy 2018, 8, 267, doi:10.3390/agronomy8110267 ............... 1 Muhammad Nadeem, Jiajia Li, Minghua Wang, Liaqat Shah, Shaoqi Lu, Xiaobo Wang and Chuanxi Ma Unraveling Field Crops Sensitivity to Heat Stress: Mechanisms, Approaches, and Future Prospects Reprinted from: Agronomy 2018, 8, 128, doi:10.3390/agronomy8070128 ............... 7 Kevin Begcy, Anna Weigert, Andrew Ogolla Egesa and Thomas Dresselhaus Compared to Australian Cultivars, European Summer Wheat (Triticum aestivum) Overreacts When Moderate Heat Stress Is Applied at the Pollen Development Stage Reprinted from: Agronomy 2018, 8, 99, doi:10.3390/agronomy8070099 ................ 41 Ibrahim S. Elbasyoni Performance and Stability of Commercial Wheat Cultivars under Terminal Heat Stress Reprinted from: Agronomy 2018, 8, 37, doi:10.3390/agronomy8040037 ................ 57 Sonja Blankenagel, Zhenyu Yang, Viktoriya Avramova, Chris-Carolin Sch¨on and Erwin Grill Generating Plants with Improved Water Use Efficiency Reprinted from: Agronomy 2018, 8, 194, doi:10.3390/agronomy8090194 ............... 77 Xin Xiong, Liying Chang, Muhammad Khalid, Jingjin Zhang and Danfeng Huang Alleviation of Drought Stress by Nitrogen Application in Brassica campestris ssp. Chinensis L. Reprinted from: Agronomy 2018, 8, 66, doi:10.3390/agronomy8050066 ................ 90 Faiza Aslam and Basharat Ali Halotolerant Bacterial Diversity Associated with Suaeda fruticosa (L.) Forssk. Improved Growth of Maize under Salinity Stress Reprinted from: Agronomy 2018, 8, 131, doi:10.3390/agronomy8080131 ...............105 Maxim Messerer, Daniel Lang and Klaus F. X. Mayer Analysis of Stress Resistance Using Next Generation Techniques Reprinted from: Agronomy 2018, 8, 130, doi:10.3390/agronomy8080130 ...............122 Angelika Mustroph Improving Flooding Tolerance of Crop Plants Reprinted from: Agronomy 2018, 8, 160, doi:10.3390/agronomy8090160 ...............129 Stefan Engelhardt, Remco Stam and Ralph H ¨uckelhoven Good Riddance? Breaking Disease Susceptibility in the Era of New Breeding Technologies Reprinted from: Agronomy 2018, 8, 114, doi:10.3390/agronomy8070114 ...............154 Stefanie Ranf Pattern Recognition Receptors—Versatile Genetic Tools for Engineering Broad-Spectrum Disease Resistance in Crops Reprinted from: Agronomy 2018, 8, 134, doi:10.3390/agronomy8080134 ...............170 v Corinna Dawid and Karina Hille Functional Metabolomics—A Useful Tool to Characterize Stress-Induced Metabolome Alterations Opening New Avenues towards Tailoring Food Crop Quality Reprinted from: Agronomy 2018, 8, 138, doi:10.3390/agronomy8080138 ...............183 Claudiu Niculaes, Aleksej Abramov, Laura Hannemann and Monika Frey Plant Protection by Benzoxazinoids—Recent Insights into Biosynthesis and Function Reprinted from: Agronomy 2018, 8, 143, doi:10.3390/agronomy8080143 ...............200 Miriam Lenk, Marion Wenig, Felicitas Mengel, Finni H¨außlerand A. Corina Vlot Arabidopsis thaliana Immunity-Related Compounds Modulate Disease Susceptibility in Barley Reprinted from: Agronomy 2018, 8, 142, doi:10.3390/agronomy8080142 ...............224 vi About the Special Issue Editors Thomas Dresselhaus is chairman of the department of Cell Biology and Plant Biochemistry and speaker of the Graduate Research Academy RNA Biology, both at the University of Regensburg, Germany. He studied biology at the Universities of Munster¨ and Tubingen¨ and obtained a PhD degree in 1994 from the University of Hamburg. He qualified as a university lecturer after various research visits to other labs, group leader positions and working for a plant biotech company. Since 2006 he is full professor at the University of Regensburg, where he served the Faculty of Biology and Preclinical Medicine first as Dean of Research and thereafter as Dean. He served the Society of Plant Reproduction IASPRR from 2010 to 2014 as President. His main research interest is on plant reproduction with a focus on signaling and gene regulation during flowering time, male and female germline development, fertilization mechanisms, and patterning during early embryo and seed development. More recent work includes investigations on heat stress during reproduction in cereals. Arabidopsis, maize and wheat are used as model systems. His lab is known for their expertise in single cell handling, fluorescence microscopy, reverse genetic approaches to study gene functions, peptide signaling mechanisms and maize biotechnology. Ralph H ¨uckelhoven received his diploma in biology from the RWTH Aachen University and his doctoral degree from the University of Giessen. He continued his work in Giessen as a research associate until 2002, when the German research foundation awarded an independent junior research group grant to him for a total of six years. In 2005, he habilitated in the agricultural faculty in Giessen and achieved the venia legendi for Molecular Phytopathology and Cell Biology. Since 2006, he is full professor of Phytopathology at the Technical University of Munich School of Life Sciences Weihenstephan. His past and present main fields of research include (i) cellular and apoplastic defense reactions to directly invading fungal plant pathogens, (ii) regulation of programmed cell death in plants, (iii) production and function of reactive oxygen species in plant-microbe interactions, (iv) pattern-triggered immunity, (v) organization of the host cytoskeleton in the interaction with fungal parasites, (vi) regulation and function of ROP GTPases signaling in disease susceptibility, (vii) resistance to Fusarium spp. in barley and (viii) molecular mechanisms of fungal virulence effector function. vii Preface to ”Biotic and Abiotic Stress Responses in Crop Plants” While the demand for crop products continues to increase strongly, agricultural productivity is threatened by various stress factors, often associated with global warming. To sustain and improve yield, it is necessary to understand how plants respond to various stresses, and to use the generated knowledge in modern breeding programs. Most knowledge regarding the molecular mechanisms associated with stress responses has been obtained from investigations using the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. Stress hormones, such as abscisic acid, jasmonic acid, and salicylic acid, have been shown to play key roles in defense responses against abiotic and biotic stresses. More recently, evidence that growth-regulating plant hormones are also involved in stress responses has been accumulating. Epigenetic regulation at the DNA and histone level, and gene regulation by small non-coding RNAs appear to be important as well. Many approaches have used mutant screens and next generation sequencing approaches to identify key players and mechanisms how plants respond to their environment. However, it is often unclear to which extent the elucidated mechanisms also operate in crops. This Special Issue Book, therefore, aims to close this gap and contains a number of contributions from labs that work both, on Arabidopsis and crops. The book includes contributions reporting how crop plant species respond to various abiotic stresses, such as drought, heat, cold, flooding, and salinity, as well as biotic stimuli during microbial infections. It contains reviews, opinions, perspectives, and original articles, and its focus is on our molecular understanding of biotic and abiotic stress responses in crops, highlighting, among other aspects, the role of stress hormones, secondary metabolites, signaling mechanisms, and changes in gene expression patterns and their regulation. Approaches and
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