Ethical and Regulatory Considerations in Plant Epigenetic Regulation during Diverse Stress Conditions

The world population is growing at a high pace and is expected to reach close to 10 billion by 2050. This rapidly increasing world population is accompanied by unchecked urbanization and industrialization, thereby compromising environmental sustainability. Therefore, the world is witnessing climate change, environmental pollution and depletion of natural resources. Under these rapidly changing environmental conditions, plants may experience different types of environmental stresses. Some of the frequently occurring environmental stresses to plants include low or high temperature, high soil salt level, heavy metal pollution and drought, as well as the damages caused by different biotic factors. All these environmental stresses are capable of severely affecting plant physiological attributes and biochemical processes/mechanisms occurring inside plants. In this way, plant growth and ultimately farm production are affected to a great extent. Hence, these environmental stresses are contributing to the challenge faced in sustaining the ever-increasing world population. Recent advancements in research have revealed that plants are equipped with various genetic and epigenetic strategies to cope with environmental stresses and maintain their growth, yield and production. The most important epigenetic alterations in plants include histone changes and DNA methylation under environmental stresses. These epigenetic alterations take place during different stages of plant growth and development. In this chapter, we highlight the plant epigenetic alterations and strategies to endure various environmental stresses.