Environmental stresses represent the most limiting factors for agricultural productivity worldwide. These stresses impact not only crop species, they are also significant barriers to the introduction of crop plants into areas that are not being used for agriculture. Stresses associated with temperature, salinity and drought, singly or in combination, are likely to enhance the severity of problems to which plants will be exposed in the coming decades. This text brings together contributions from many laboratories around the world to discuss and compare our knowledge of the role stress genes play in plant stress tolerance. In addition, strategies are discussed to introduce these genes and the processes that they encode into economically important crops, and the effect this will have on plant productivity
