Metabolic engineering for understanding abiotic stress tolerance in plants

Abiotic stresses such as drought, salinity, heat, cold, and heavy metals severely affect the growth and production of plants. Metabolomics is an efficient approach for extracting complete information on the metabolites and metabolic pathways<br/>implicated in abiotic stress tolerance. Furthermore, metabolic engineering can<br/>improve secondary metabolite production, thus enhancing plant tolerance to<br/>different environmental stresses. Several metabolic genes have been identified and engineered to generate stress-tolerant transgenic crops; however, there has been limited achievement in the development of abiotic stress-tolerant cultivars. Hence, there is significant demand to identify novel metabolic genes and pathways for efficiently enhancing plant tolerance to abiotic stresses. Here, we review the application of primary and secondary metabolic genes using metabolic engineering technology for developing crop plants that tolerate abiotic stresses.