Contribution of Genomics to Gene Discovery in Plant Abiotic Stress Responses

Sustaining agricultural production under adverse environ- mental conditions, such as drought and high salinity, rep- resents a major challenge. The discovery of key genes and signal transduction pathways underlying plant responses to environmental stress will play an important role in devel- oping strategies for the genetic improvement of crops to address this challenge. Crop functional genomics has greatly contributed to the identification of abiotic stress-related genes. Current advances in genomic technologies now pro- vide effective and high-throughput methods for identifying stress-related genes at a genome-wide level, especially with the availability of the complete genomic sequence of several model and crop plant species. The development of genetic database resources has allowed bioinformatic approaches to identify stress-tolerant gene families across species based on homology and synteny. Additionally, genome-wide associa- tion studies （GWAS） for complex trait loci in crops have facili- tated the discovery of critical stress-related genes and their favorable alleles.