Plant Hormones in Crop Improvement (Paperback)

Plant Hormones in Crop Improvement examines the signaling pathways and mechanisms associated with phytohormones, with particular focus on stress resilience. The growing population of world and unpredictable climate puts pressure on the agriculture production. Current constraints such as increasing temperatures, drought, salinity, cold, nutrient deficiency, along with biotic interactions trigger exquisitely tuned responsive mechanisms in plants. The main coordinators of all stress-related mechanisms are phytohormones, which can be transported over long distances and play a significant role in controlling physiological, agronomic and growth traits, metabolites and sustained crop productivity. Therefore, understanding the mechanisms influencing the stress responses mediated by phytohormones is crucial to ensure the continuity of agricultural production and food security. This book aims to address sustainable agricultural approaches to improve biotic and abiotic stress resilience in crop plants, covering different topics from perception and signaling plant hormones to physiological and molecular changes under different cues. Plant Hormones in Crop Improvement is an essential read for students, researchers and agriculturalists interested in plant physiology, plant genetics and crop yield improvement.

M. Iqbal R. Khan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Botany and serves as Deputy Director of the Centre for Environment and Sustainable Development (CESD) at Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi, India. He also holds adjunct appointments at Korea University, Seoul, South Korea, and at The University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia. Dr. Khan’s research focuses on major staple crops, particularly wheat, with the objective of reducing their susceptibility to environmental stress under projected future climatic conditions and contributing to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. His work addresses the challenges posed by environmental stressors to agricultural productivity, which remain a critical concern for global food and nutritional security. He has published over 100 research articles and has edited several books and authored multiple book chapters with leading publishers. He has an established citation record, as reflected in widely used bibliometric indicators. Dr. Khan has been recognized as a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher in the Animal and Plant Science category and has been listed among the top 2% of scientists globally by Elsevier and Stanford University (2021–25). He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, India (NASI), in Plant and Agricultural Sciences, and a recipient of the Indian National Science Academy (INSA) Young Associates award (2024). His accolades include the R.H. Dastur Gold Medal Award―ISPP (2023), the Young Scientist Platinum Jubilee Award―NASI (2021), and the Young Scientist Award―ISPP (2018). He serves on the editorial boards of many renowned journals, including Plant and Soil, Journal of Plant Growth Regulation, 3-Biotech, and Plant Physiology Reports. He has also served as a guest editor for Agriculture, Frontiers in Plant Science, Sustainability, and Plant Physiology and Biochemistry.

Dr. Amarjeet Singh is a scientist and faculty member at the National Institute of Plant Genome Research (NIPGR), New Delhi, INDIA. After obtaining his doctoral degree from University of Delhi, INDIA, he did post-doctoral research at Washington State University, Pullman, USA. His research has provided crucial resources and insights for functional genomic studies in important crop plants such as rice and chickpea. The focus of his research has been the understanding of molecular and functional behaviour of important abiotic stress, hormone and development signalling genes, including protein phosphatases, kinases, calcium transporters and phospholipases. At NIPGR major research focus of the group is to understand the molecular mechanism of nutrient (N P, K) uptake, transport and homeostasis and improving nutrient use efficiency (NUE) in crop plants rice and chickpea. Emphasis is majorly on modulation of root system architecture and genetic manipulation of nutrient transporter and their regulatory proteins. This effort would help in generating crop plants with better NUE, consequently, will result in minimal use of very expensive and polluting chemical fertilizers in agriculture system.
Dr. Singh has published about 30 research/review articles in highly reputed, peer-reviewed international journals. Also, he has co-edited a book, and published about 10 book chapters with noted book publishers. For his significant contribution in the field of plant sciences and agriculture, he was selected for the prestigious Membership of National Academy of Sciences (NASI), the oldest science academy in India. He was also awarded the coveted Young Scientist Platinum Jubilee Award (2017) from NASI and Pran Vohra Award (2018-19) from the Indian Science Congress Association (ISCA). He is also conferred with several national and international awards and fellowships during his Ph.D. and post-doctoral research, including SERB-DST Young Scientist award, Young Investigator Award-DBT, D.S. Kothari Post-doctoral Fellowship, Travel Award by American Society of Plant Biologists (ASPB), USA, Travel Award by CSIR-India. He has served as reviewer for several prestigious international journals, such as Plant Cell Reports, Biotechnology and Bioengineering, PLoS ONE, Plant Molecular Biology, Frontiers in Plant Science, Plant Molecular Biology Reporter, Acta Physiologiae Plantarum, Scientific reports, Plant Physiology and Biochemistry and Journal of Plant Growth Regulation.

Dr. Péter Poór is an assistant professor, who has been leading the Plant Stress Physiology and Photosynthesis Research Group at the Department of Plant Biology of the University of Szeged, Hungary since 2017. His main research area is the investigation of plant defense hormones, and a better understanding of plant defense mechanisms, especially in the dark. As a result of his work, he has published more than 80 international scientific publications to date, to which he has received more than 1,000 citations. In addition to his research work, he participates in the lecturer activities of the Department of Plant Biology, including the teaching of plant cell biology, plant anatomy, photosynthesis, and plant stress physiology. His teaching activities were twice recognized with the Golden Chalk Award based on student votes. In addition, he is an active organizer of university public life, as well as takes part in a wide range of scientific dissemination activities and science organization activities. He is the secretary of the Hungarian Free Radical Research Society and a member of the Hungarian Plant Biology Society. He is also a member of the editorial boards of several international journals (e.g. Frontiers in Plant Science, Journal of Plant Growth Regulation). In 2019, he won the János Bolyai Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Science Academy. In 2018, he received the first prize in the Lecture Series of Young Plant Biologists of the Hungarian Plant Biology Society.