Global climate change can have an impact on the yield of crops and is an issue that must be addressed for attaining food security. Further, it can reduce the net carbon gain by increasing plant respiration rates, which in turn would decrease the production yield of crops including cereals and fodder crops and could even result in the invasion of weed, pathogens and pests. Understanding the physiological basis of crop production under sustainable agriculture holds key to the future success of developing abiotic stress tolerant crop plants. Cereal grains are staple foods to most of the population across the globe. In order to feed the predicted world population of 9.8 billion people by 2050, a 70–100% increase in cereal food production is required. Enhancing the production rates is generally accepted as the solution to meet the increasing demand, but the current production rates are not adequate to meet the targets. The elevated level of CO2 decreases the quality as well as quantity of various fodder crops and trees. Forage sector acts as both contributor as well as source of adaptation to climate change. The rise in temperature disrupts crop growth and development and this disturbance mainly causes a shift in phenological development of crops and affects their economic yield. To resolve this problem, the scientific community must find alternative crops, improved varieties and techniques to face the ill-effects of global warming. This book provides an overview of impact of climate change on cereals and fodder crop production and possible management strategies and physiological interventions to mitigate its harmful impacts on cereals and fodder crops for achieving sustainable production.
Dr. R. Gomathi, Principal Scientist (Plant Physiology) having 23 years of research experience in sugarcane physiology and molecular biology is working at ICAR-Sugarcane Breeding Institute, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu. Her research work on screening varieties and phenotyping for abiotic stresses, such as drought, salinity, high temperature, oxidative stress and waterlogging tolerance are highly noteworthy and has practical relevance. She has been associated with standardizing screening techniques for drought, high temperature and oxidative stress tolerance in Sachharum species. Dr. R. Gomathi has been associated in identifying 152 drought tolerant clones, of which 10 clones, namely Co 99004, Co 2001-13, Co 2001-15, Co 0218, Co 0403, Co 06027, Co 09004, Co 10026, Co 212 and Co 06022 have attained varietal status. She was instrumental in registration of genetic stocks for waterlogging tolerance (99 WL 379) and for combined drought and high temperature tolerance in Co 06015. She is recipient of 7 best paper awards and 1 best book award from National and International conferences, Scientist of the Year Award 2017-18 by SVWS, STAI Silver Medal Award, Mother Theresa Gold Medal Award from GEPRA and Professor MS Swaminathan Best Scientist Award for the year 2018-19. She is the life member in 13 professional societies and in 7, she is a Fellow member (Academy of Sciences, Chennai (FAC); STAI (FSTAI) and SED (FSED), India, New Delhi; Member in NASI (mNASI), Allahabad, UP; Bose Science Society (FBSS), Tamil Nadu and Fellow of Indian Society of Plant Physiology (FISPP), New Delhi and Fellow of Agricultural Scientific Tamil Society (FASTA), New Delhi.
Dr. Viswanathan Chinnusamy is Principal Scientist (Plant Physiology) and Head, Division of Plant Physiology at the ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi. He has 24 years of research experience in the area of abiotic stress tolerance of plants, specifically Abscisic acid signalling, Cold stress signalling, small RNAs, epigenetics, phenomics and genome editing. He has contributed to the establishment of Nanaji Deshmukh Plant Phenomics Centre at IARI. He has 20 years of experience in teaching Masters and Ph.D. students. He has published about 150 papers in peer reviewed journals. Earlier he served as Editor-in-Chief of Plant Physiology Reports (published by Indian Society for Plant Physiology, India & Springer), and Associate Editor, Frontiers in Plant Sciences.
Dr. M. Prakash obtained his B.Sc. (Ag.) and M.Sc. (Ag.) from Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, India in 1988 and 1990 respectively. He did his Ph.D. from Annamalai University. He was awarded with National Merit Scholarship, Government of India during 1981-1988 and ICAR-Junior Fellowship during 1988-1990. His expertise in abiotic stress tolerance is well recognised by invitations to serve in the Editorial Board/ Committees of several academic journals, awards and Fellowships like Crop Research Award in 2004, Best Researcher Award in Annamalai University in 2010, and Fellowship like FELLOW of Indian Society of Plant Physiology, New Delhi in 2015 (FISPP) and FELLOW of National Academy of Biological Sciences, Chennai, 2015 (FNABS). Professor Dr. M. Prakash is having around 26 years of teaching and research experience. He has guided 8 Ph.D. scholars and 22 PG Scholars. His credentials include publications of 110 referred research papers, seven books published by National publishers, and one book chapter published in SESAME by globally reputed CRC Press. He has organized 6 National Seminars and completed five research projects. He has earned the status of Departmental Research Support with Special Assistance Programme of University Grants Commission (UGC-SAP- DRS) to the Department with financial assistance of Rs. 50 lakhs at Phase I(2009-2014) and Rs. 1.025 Crore at phase II (2015-2020) level.
Dr. M. Maheswari has superannuated as Director (Acting), ICAR-Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture and also as Principal Scientist and Head, Division of Crop Sciences, ICAR-CRIDA, Hyderabad, Telangana, India on December 31, 2020. Presently, she is Editor-in-Chief, Plant Physiology Reports and Adjunct Professor, PJTSAU, Hyderabad. Her field of specialization in agricultural research is stress physiology, in particular, drought tolerance in rainfed crops. She has made significant contributions in crop stress tolerance by integrating efforts on whole plant as well as cellular level for elucidating the traits, mechanisms and genes involved in drought tolerance. Among different noted contributions, she developed first ever transgenic sorghum lines with mtlD gene with enhanced tolerance to water-deficit stress. Her research team isolated, cloned and characterized genes for water deficit stress tolerance from indigenous sources of rainfed crops as well as heat tolerant microbes. She contributed to development of popular horse gram varieties, CRHG-22, CRHG-19 (CRIDA Harsha) released in south Indian states. Dr. Maheswari is recipient of the coveted Panjabrao Deshmukh Woman Agricultural Scientist Award of ICAR. For her scientific contributions, she has been elected as Fellow of Indian Society for Plant Physiology. She has received FAO Fellowship to work at Phytotron, CSIRO Division of Plant Industry, and Canberra. She is recipient of a few other prestigious awards including J.J. Chenoy Gold Medal of ISPP in 2013, Samaikya Bharat Gaurav Satkar 2007 of Madras Telugu Academy, Bharat Mahila Siromani Award, 2013 and Dr. Abdul Kalam Excellency Award, 2018 of Health Care International and Prof. S.K. Sinha Memorial Lecture Award, 2019 from Indian Society for Plant Physiology. She has guided 3 Ph.D. and 10 M.Sc./M. Tech students. She has published over 170 high quality research paper/articles including research papers in National & International journals of repute and has a h-index of 26. She has also Co-edited a book on Crop Stress Management, published by Springer.
Dr. Ajay Arora is working as Principal Scientist, Division of Plant Physiology, IARI, New Delhi since 2008. He started his career as a Scientist in the ICAR in 1991 from IARI. He obtained his graduation from Delhi University and Doctorate from Meerut University and gained postdoctoral experience from Tsukuba University, Japan (2001-2003). His area of specialization includes Plant Physiology, Genetic Engineering and Functional Genomics. His one of the most important contributions is the development of transgenic tomato with longer shelf life to avoid postharvest losses by manipulating the ethylene receptors. Another area presently working is the development of transgenic wheat with improved tolerance to heat and drought. His vast contributions are well recognized and have been endowed with many awards and honours, including the Senior Award of the “Academy for the Advancement of Agricultural Sciences (AAAS)” by Indian Society for Plant Physiology (ISPP), New Delhi (2007); J.J. Chinoy Gold Medal Award by the ISPP (2010); G.S. Sirohi Award (2010) for best published paper in Indian Journal of Plant Physiology; JSPS (Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science) long-term Post-doctoral fellowship (2001-2003); Fellow, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) (2003); Fellow, ISPP (2007); Editor-in-Chief, Indian Journal of Plant Physiology (2010- 2012); Associate Editor, IJPP (2013-2019) and won many Paper/Poster Presentation Awards (20+) and chaired/co-chaired many important session of International/National Conferences; Got Best Teacher’s Award of IARI2013; Got Best Team Award-ICAR (2016); Has also visited various International laboratories in different countries like University of Tsukuba, Japan; Montreal, Canada; Barcelona, Spain; Kobe University, Japan; Boston, Massachusetts, USA; Nara Prefecture, Japan; Paris, France; Frankfurt, Germany. Has more than 150 publications, including 125+ in peer-reviewed high impact factor journals of repute. He is instrumental in training over 30 scientists and teachers from ICAR Institutes and SAUs as Course Director and guided/guiding many meritorious M. Sc. and Ph.D. students
