Cold and water deficit regulatory mechanisms in rice: Optimizing stress tolerance potential by pathway integration and network engineering

The responses of rice to cold and water deficit are multidimensional. A holistic approach to maximize tolerance potential requires the optimization of ideal combinations of multiple interacting entities in a genetic network. This chapter presents a modern view for engineering stress-resilient rice cultivars. The first section summarizes the physiological and biochemical aspects of cold and water deficit at the whole-plant and cellular levels. The second part summarizes the major hubs of signaling and transcriptional regulation that lead to biochemical and physiological changes as validated by functional genomics. The rapidly emerging area of investigation on epigenetic regulatory mechanisms as critical layer of control for fine-tuning is presented in brief in the third section. And finally, the last section summarizes the large-effect QTL for cold tolerance and yield stability under drought. By integrating these four layers of information, this chapter should inspire a holistic approach for stress tolerance engineering with strategies illuminated by systems-level biology.