Emerging Technologies and Management of Crop Stress Tolerance

Chapter 16

Silicon and Selenium

Two Vital Trace Elements that Confer Abiotic Stress Tolerance to Plants

Mirza Hasanuzzaman, Kamrun Nahar and Masayuki Fujita

Plants are sessile organisms and therefore must constantly adapt their growth and architecture to an ever-changing environment. The damages in growth and development of economic plants caused due to abiotic stresses like salinity, drought, extreme temperature, flooding, toxic metals, ozone, and UV radiation are quite alarming due to shrinking agricultural land area, recurrently expanding population, and rapid climate change throughout the world. To cope with adverse growing conditions, plant scientists are searching for ways to make plants adaptive. They are trying to understand the effect ...