A Review of the Methods of Identifying and Testing Plant Cold Resistance

Low-tempemture stress is a major abiotic stress influencing plant growth, economic yield and quality worldwide. Precise and reliable identification and test of plant cold resistance is a foundation for exploring low-temperature damages, cold resistance mechanism of plants, cultivating and innovating quality cold-re- sistant germplasm resources, which is rather important for woody plants because their perennial and large-sized characteristics. Generally, most researches on plant cold-resistant physiology focused on identification and utilization of cold resistance worldwide, and a few on test methods of cold resistance, but cold resistance mechanism has been less reported. Therefore, researches on methods of identifying and testing plant resistance have achieved considerable progress, accumulated much experience and formed characteristics gradually in terms of methodology. Current methods of identifying plant cold resistance include open field/outdoor culti- vation evaluation, cold and frost damage investigation, simulated cold weather, and mathematical model forecast. And the methods of testing plant cold resistance include growth condition test, frozen index investigation, electrolyte leakage, bioelectrical impedance mapping and so on. Synthesizing the methods of identifying and testing plant cold resistance should be a key matter in the present and future researches and application of plant cold resistance physiology, improvement and in- novation of the identification and test will be an important direction of the future researches. Identification and test of plant cold resistance based on genomies, meta- bonomics and proteomics should be the new trend of the researches on physiology and ecology of plant cold resistance.