By the year 2050, the world’s population is predicted to have grown to around 9–10 billion people. The food demand in many countries continues to increase with population growth. Various abiotic stresses such as temperature, soil salinity and moisture all have an impact on plant growth and development at all levels of plant growth, including the overall plant, tissue cell, and even sub-cellular level. These abiotic stresses directly harm plants by causing protein denaturation and aggregation as well as increased fluidity of membrane lipids. In addition to direct effects, indirect damage also includes protein synthesis inhibition, protein breakdown, and membranous loss in chloroplasts and mitochondria. Abiotic stress during the reproductive stage results in flower drop, pollen sterility, pollen tube deformation, ovule abortion, and reduced yield. Plant nutrition is one of the most effective ways of reducing abiotic stress in agricultural crops. In this paper, we have discussed the effectiveness of different nutrients for alleviating abiotic stress. The roles of primary nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium), secondary nutrients (calcium, magnesium and sulphur), micronutrients (zinc, boron, iron and copper), and beneficial nutrients (cobalt, selenium and silicon) in alleviating abiotic stress in crop plants are discussed.

Drought and heat stress are two major abiotic stresses that challenge the sustainability of agriculture to a larger extend. The changing and unpredictable climate further aggravates the efforts made by researchers as well as farmers. The stresses during the terminal stage of cool-season food legumes may affect numerous physiological and biochemical reactions that may result in poor yield. The plants possess a good number of adaptative and avoiding mechanisms to sustain the adverse situation. The various agronomic and breeding approaches may help in stress-induced alteration. The physiological and biochemical response of crops to any adverse situation is very important to understand to develop mechanisms and approaches for tolerance in plants. Agronomic approaches like altering the planting time, seed priming, foliar application of various macro and micro nutrients, and the application of rhizobacteria may help in mitigating the adverse effect of heat and drought stress to some extent. Breeding approaches like trait-based selection, inheritance studies of marker-based selection, genetic approaches using the transcriptome and metabolome may further pave the way to select and develop crops with better heat and drought stress adaptation and mitigation.

Due to rapid population growth and the limitation of land resources, the sustainability of agricultural ecosystems has attracted more attention all over the world. Human activities will alter the components of the atmosphere and lead to climate change, which consequently affects crop production badly. In this context, wheat is considered an important crop and ranks as one of the top strategic crops globally. The main objective of this research is to develop a new approach (a weighted climatic suitability index) for evaluating the climate suitability for wheat production. The specific objectives are to project the impact of future climate change on wheat suitability using three models based on WCSI and CMIP6-based projections and to identify the most vulnerable area to climate change and productivity reduction. The climatic criteria for wheat production were selected and classified into eight indicators based on the Sys' scheme and the FAO framework, and then the weighted overlay approach was used in conjunction with the analytic hierarchy process. To confirm the reliability of the integrated WCSI, we determined the nonlinear curve fitting of integrated WCSI-induced wheat yields by the exponential growth equation. Finally, the CMIP6-GCMs projected from three shared socioeconomic pathways were used for WCSI mapping and predicting wheat yields in the short and long term (Southern Syria was selected as a case study). The results show that the nonlinear correlation between wheat yields and the integrated WCSI was 0.78 (R² = 0.61) confirming the integrated WCSI's reliability in reflecting yield variation caused by climate suitability. The results indicated that WCSI for wheat will be lower over the study area during 2080–2100 compared to the current climate. During 2080–2100, the wheat yield is projected to decrease by 0.2–0.8 t. ha⁻¹ in the western parts of the study area. The findings of this study could be used to plan and develop adaptation strategies for sustainable wheat production in the face of projected climate change. The results of the study will also help in the strategic planning of wheat production in Syria under the projected climate. The results of this research are limited to small areas as a case study, although they are not relevant to similar regions worldwide. However, the study employs novel analytical methods that can be used broadly.

The increasing population further risks the availability of land. A sustainable increase in the food production is needed to meet the future food and nutrition demand. Soil is the major natural source of plant nutrients and soil fertilization is one of the viable options to achieve greater crop production. A sustainable management of the soil is thus highly needed to maintain a sustainable livelihood. Smart fertilizers by the way of its availability and target based nutrient availability are considered to be a new and effective way to reach our sustainable livelihood target. This paper has tried to understand the concept of smart fertilizers and few options available for it.

Rice yields are largely influenced by variability in weather. Here, we demonstrate the effect of weather variables viz., maximum and minimum temperatures, rainfall, morning and evening relative humidity, bright sunshine hours on the yield of rice cv. Swarna, grown across five rice ecologies of India through field experiments during kharif (wet) season (Jun-Sept.). Critical thresholds of weather elements were identified for achieving above average, average and below average yield for each ecology. The investigation could determine how different weather elements individually and collectively affect rice yield in different rice ecosystems of India. While a sudden increase in minimum temperature by 8-10 °C (> 30 °C) during reproductive period resulted in 40-50 per cent yield reduction at Mohanpur, a sudden decrease (< 20 °C) caused yield decline at Dapoli. The higher yields may be attributed to a significant difference in bright sunshine hours between reproductive phases of above-average and below-average yield years (ranging from 2.8 to 7.8 hours during P5 stages and 1.7 to 5.1 during P4 stages). Rice cultivar Swarna performed differently at various sowing dates in a location as well as across locations (6650 kg ha^-1 at Dapoli to 1101 kg ha^-1 at Samastipur). It was also found that across all locations, the above average yield could be associated with higher range of maximum temperature compared to that of below average yield. Principal component analysis explained 77 per cent of cumulative variance among the variables at first growth stage, whereas 70 per cent at second growth stage followed by 74 per cent and 66 per cent at subsequent growth stages. We found that coastal locations, in contrast to inland ones, could maximize the yield potential of the cultivar Swarna, due to the longer duration of days between panicle initiation to physiological maturity. We anticipate that the location-specific thresholds of weather factors will encourage rice production techniques that are climate resilient.