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1.25: Mining Plant Superb Varieties for Increased Resilience to Suboptimal Conditions

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    73649

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    Plants are a very important source of food, feed, and fuel. Therefore, exploring their natural diversity and protecting their germplasm resources is key to future food security. Environmental interaction includes the defense of plant species against biotic and abiotic stress tolerance. There are a number of stress factors for plants including: temperature (cold, high), salt, nutrient deficiency, and metal toxicity. As a result, stress conditions can possibly inhibit the plant’s growth and development, and therefore, affect plant yield and quality. Furthermore, plant response to environmental stress (both biotic and abiotic) consists of several diverse mechanisms. For example, plant varieties can grow modified structures (e.g., spines) or modify their growth (e.g., shorter stems, modified leaf area) in response to environmental stress and to survive or adapt.

    The largest seed bank is the Svalbard Global Seed Vault (1000 m2) in the island of Spitsbergen, Norway that have 4.5 million seed accessions of total 6 million accessions worldwide.

    \(\PageIndex{1}\). Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs)

    • SLO 25.01: Apply the best practices for learning resilience to environmental stress
    • SLO 25.02: Describe the characteristics of tolerance to high temperature stress
    • SLO 25.03: Describe the characteristics of tolerance to cold temperature stress
    • SLO 25.04: Describe the characteristics of tolerance to salt stress
    • SLO 25.05: Identify given plant species with their scientific names based on their key features
    • SLO 25.06: Explain importance of genetic variation in plant biology
    • SLO 25.07: Explain how diverse varieties affect survival of plants

    \(\PageIndex{2}\). Big Picture

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    \(\PageIndex{3}\). Test Your Knowledge

    • Assessment 1: TRUE or FALSE: You only need to plant these plants once and harvest for years because they are perennials: asparagus, chives, rhubarb, strawberries.
    • Assessment 2: TRUE or FALSE: Needle type of modified leaves are evolutionary adaptation to prevent desiccation and hold more moisture.
    • Assessment 3: TRUE or FALSE: All species lived in the sea until ~550 million years ago.
    • Assessment 4: TRUE or FALSE: Only 12 crops supply 80% of the world’s food supply: sugarcane, maize, rice, wheat, potato, soybean, cassava, tomato, banana, onion, apple, and grape.
    • Assessment 5: TRUE or FALSE: The more genetic variation is the better because it will increase survival of some varieties or species.

    \(\PageIndex{4}\). Can You Spot These Plants?

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    \(\PageIndex{5}\). Check Your Answers

    1. TRUE
    2. TRUE
    3. TRUE
    4. TRUE

    This page titled 1.25: Mining Plant Superb Varieties for Increased Resilience to Suboptimal Conditions is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Gokhan Hacisalihoglu (Florida State Open Publishing) via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform; a detailed edit history is available upon request.