Drought stress in plants: An overview on implications, tolerance mechanisms and agronomic mitigation strategies

Drought is considered as one of the major limiting factors affecting growth and productivity of crop plants. It severely affects the morphological and physiological activities of the plants and hampers the seed germination, root proliferation, biomass accumulation and final yield of field crops. Drought stress disrupts the biosynthesis of chlorophyll contents, carotene and decreases photosynthesis in plants. It gradually reduces CO2 assimilation rates owing to decrease in stomatal conductance. In addition, drought affects cell membrane stability and disrupts water relations of a plant by reducing water use efficiency. To cope with these situations, plants adopt different mechanisms such as drought tolerance, avoidance and escape. In this review, we discussed about the effects of drought on morphological and physiological characteristics of plants and suggested the different agronomic practices to overcome the deleterious effects of drought stress.