Effect of high temperatures on plant responses to environmental stress

Identifier:  TFG:2981

Handle: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11797/TFG2981

Authors:  Orero Bayo, Marta

Abstract:
Climate change is one of the greatest threats to agricultural production, intensifying and increasing the frequency of abiotic stresses such as high temperatures, drought or high light radiation that negatively affect crop growth and development. These factors occur simultaneously in nature causing plants to respond with physiological or molecular changes that allow them to adapt to environmental stress conditions. Acclimatization responses are specific to the combination of stresses and cannot be extrapolated from the responses that plants make to individual stresses. Therefore, understanding plant responses to combined stresses has become one of the main needs in order to develop crops tolerant to new climatic conditions. In this work, several studies have been analysed to understand the physiological and molecular responses of Arabidopsis thaliana and Solanum lycopersicum. The plants have been studied under conditions of heat stress and light stress, and heat stress and water stress applied individually and in combination to understand the effect that high temperatures have in combination with other abiotic stresses. The different studies that have been analysed show that the main effect of high temperatures is the photosystem II inhibition and the combination with other stresses increase the damage generating also stomatic limitation. Moreover, heat stress reduced antioxidant enzymatic activity which generates an increase in oxidative stress that is enhanced by the combination with other stresses. In addition, the combination of stresses produces an increase in damage to plants and depending on the type of stress with which heat stress is combined, plant responses vary, despite having high temperatures in common.