Heterologous Expression of Genes in Plants for Abiotic Stresses

Abiotic stresses are considered to be the major factors causing a decrease in crop yield globally, these stresses include high and low temperature, salinity, drought, and light stress etc. To overcome the consistent food demand for the ever-growing population, various genes from micro-organisms and non-plant sources have been expressed in transgenic plants to improve their tolerance against abiotic stresses. Gene expression in transgenic plants through conventional methods are time-consuming and laborious that’s why advanced genetic engineering methods for example Agrobacterium-mediated transformation and biolistic methods are more accurate, useful, and less time-consuming. This review provides an insight into various bacterial genes for example mtID, codA, betA, ADH, IPT, DRNF1 and ggpPS, etc. that have been successfully expressed in transgenic plants against various abiotic stress for stress tolerance enhancement and crop yield improvement which exhibited good encouraging results. Genes from yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) have been introduced in transgenic plants against drought and salinity stress. All these genes expressed from non-plant sources in plants can be very helpful to enhance crops for better yield productivity in the future to meet the demands of the consistently rising population of the world.