Recent Insights into Signaling Responses to Cope Drought Stress in Rice

Drought is one of the hot topics needing urgent attention in the current era of climate change. It massively disturbs the rice growth and productivity and is becoming a serious threat. The drought avoidance strategies in rice include stomatal closure, cellular adaptation and changes in root development. Moreover, the endogenous plant hormones (abscisic acid and jasmonic acid) and reactive oxygen species have paramount importance in drought tolerance in rice. The drought tolerance induces modification in biochemical, molecular and physiological properties of plants. At the molecular level, expression of several transcription-factors is modulated which further determine the activation of drought responsive gene families. Mitogen activated protein kinases and Ca signaling pathways initiate an array of signaling cascade for mediating the gene expression in rice. Approaches, conventional breeding methods combined with modern emerging techniques such as genetic engineering, to improve rice drought tolerance were discussed. This review provided recent insights into major regulatory factors against drought stress, signaling mechanisms and molecular engineering strategies (including conventional transgenic and recent genome editing approaches) to induce drought tolerance in rice.