Drought and Poaceae Crops

Dear Colleagues,

Currently, global climate change is a major challenge that includes various climate-driven extremes, i.e., increased temperatures, erratic rainfall, and frequent and severe droughts that put pressure on sustainable agricultural crop production. The Poaceae family represent the most economically important group of crops susceptible to abiotic stress. This plant family consists of monocotyledon grasses, which include several staple cereals, such as maize, rice and wheat, and members such as sugarcane, which is the world’s largest biomass producing crop. These crops are especially susceptible to negative climatic effects, and using novel and integrated adaptation strategies and our knowledge of nature, we must develop more stress-tolerant genotypes that can counter these environmental changes. This Special Issue of Plants will concentrate on novel biotechnological methods of developing drought-stress-tolerant genotypes and improving our knowledge of the wide range of molecular, biochemical and physiological alterations underlying stress tolerance in Poaceae crop plants.

Dr. Christell Van Der Vyver
Prof. Dr. Sanjib Kumar Panda
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Plants is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Poaceae
• drought
• abiotic stress
• drought tolerance
• biotechnological approaches

Title: Metabolite profiling of the resurrection grass Eragrostis nindensis during desiccation and recovery
Authors: Erikan Baluku; Llewelyn van der Pas; Jill M. Farrant
Affiliation: Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of Cape Town, South Africa
Abstract: Resurrection plants tolerate near complete water loss. Eragrostis nindensis survives desiccation in young leaves, whereas older leaves do not, and senesce during late desiccation. Roots survive and do not senesce. This study investigated the whole plant tissue metabolomes during desiccation and recovery of E. nindensis. Gas chromatography mass spectrophotometry was used, and results show that different metabolites accumulate in non-senescent, senescent and root tissues, with sugars, amino acids, and organic acids playing a global role in desiccation tolerance. The root metabolome was less affected by desiccation. Post-rehydration, amino acids and organic acids accumulated in non-senescent tissue, facilitating metabolic resumption.