Enhancing cold tolerance in horticultural plants using in vitro approaches

The economic benefits of horticultural plants are steadily rising over the years owing to the fact that they provide high yield and returns per unit area as compared to other crops. However, the world has limited arable area which is further limited by various types of abiotic stresses, of which the extremes of temperature is very critical. Extreme temperatures lead to physiological, metabolic, and molecular damages to the plants causing a substantial loss to yield by lowering germination rate, killing seedlings, and inducing symptoms like surface lesions, chlorosis, necrosis, desiccation, wilting, etc. in mature plants. Conventional plant breeding has been employed for years to cross species and genera to and select varieties with abiotic stress tolerance. The use of this traditional method is however limited and has not achieved notable results in developing cold-tolerant varieties. In vitro tissue culture-based tools allow a deeper understanding of the physiology of plants growing under stress and also help in the development of abiotic stress-tolerant plants. In the last decade, ample research has also been done to develop cold-tolerant transgenic plants. This chapter reviews the role of biotechnology in the development of cold stress-tolerant horticultural plants.