review · Plants
Environmental changes trigger abiotic stresses that lead to the accumulation of reactive oxygen species in plants. These molecules are generated in multiple subcellular compartments, including chloroplasts, mitochondria, peroxisomes, the endoplasmic reticulum, and the plasma membrane. When production exceeds detoxification, reactive oxygen species inflict oxidative damage on lipids, proteins, and nucleic acids. However, at low concentrations, they act as critical signalling agents that activate transduction pathways, gene expression networks, and kinase or phosphatase cascades to manage plant stress responses. In Poaceae crops facing drought stress, reactive oxygen species regulate both abscisic acid-dependent and abscisic acid-independent pathways. Plants mitigate oxidative stress through enzymatic and non-enzymatic antioxidant scavenging mechanisms. A clear comprehension of these signalling mechanisms and antioxidant systems provides opportunities to develop cell-protection strategies, manipulating reactive oxygen species to improve crop performance and yield under adverse environmental conditions.
Changing weather conditions subject staple crops such as grasses and cereals to severe drought stress, threatening agricultural yields. Reactive oxygen species cause cellular damage when uncontrolled, but also govern vital protective stress pathways. Deciphering these dual roles clarifies how crops naturally tolerate environmental pressures, providing foundational biological knowledge needed to design interventions that enhance crop survival and productivity during changing climatic conditions.
This work highlights potential applications in crop improvement programmes, offering targets for developing drought-tolerant Poaceae crops via breeding or biotechnological tools that manipulate reactive oxygen species signalling and antioxidant scavenging. Plant breeders, agbiotech developers, and agricultural input companies represent the prospective users. Because this review focuses on synthesising basic cellular and molecular mechanisms, practical applications remain at an early, discovery-stage research phase, requiring extensive genetic or chemical testing before field-ready cultivars or treatments emerge.
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Agriculture and changing environmental conditions are closely related, as weather changes could adversely affect living organisms or regions of crop cultivation. Changing environmental conditions trigger different abiotic stresses, which ultimately cause the accumulation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in plants. Common ROS production sites are the chloroplast, endoplasmic reticulum, plasma membrane, mitochondria, peroxisomes, etc. The imbalance in ROS production and ROS detoxification in plant cells leads to oxidative damage to biomolecules such as lipids, nucleic acids, and proteins. At low concentrations, ROS initiates signaling events related to development and adaptations to abiotic stress in plants by inducing signal transduction pathways. In plants, a stress signal is perceived by various receptors that induce a signal transduction pathway that activates numerous signaling networks, which disrupt gene expression, impair the diversity of kinase/phosphatase signaling cascades that manage the stress response in the plant, and result in changes in physiological responses under various stresses. ROS production also regulates ABA-dependent and ABA-independent pathways to mitigate drought stress. This review focuses on the common subcellular location of manufacturing, complex signaling mechanisms, and networks of ROS, with an emphasis on cellular effects and enzymatic and non-enzymatic antioxidant scavenging mechanisms of ROS in <i>Poaceae</i> crops against drought stress and how the manipulation of ROS regulates stress tolerance in plants. Understanding ROS systems in plants could help to create innovative strategies to evolve paths of cell protection against the negative effects of excessive ROS in attempts to improve crop productivity in adverse environments.
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DOI: 10.3390/plants13152071
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