Summary
‘In a world that has the means for feeding its population, the persistence of hunger is a scandal’ (Food and Agriculture Organization 2006). This is a very comprehensive statement made by the United Nations Organization and clearly explains the present state of apathy of world agriculture. While plant physiological investigations provide knowledge and better understanding of the effects of abiotic stress on plants, crop physiology provides information on how stress affects plant growth, and eventually agricultural yield. Growing global demand for food and feed of various plant-based products, climatic change-imposed stress on agriculture and the new opportunities, such as the advances in molecular biology, are covered in this chapter. The extent of crop yield loss due to abiotic stresses can be reduced by manipulating plant metabolism, and use of genetically-engineered plants. This chapter provides readers with a broad overview of the various types of abiotic stresses and their influence on the yields of economically important crops such as cereals, grain legumes, vegetable crops, oilseed crops, forage crops and medicinal crops (Rai and Takabe 2006).