Recent Advances in Plant Adaptation to Climate Change – An Introduction to Compatible Solutes

The phenomenon of climate change has appeared in recent time as an unstoppable and unequivocal event due to the change of environmental condition, rising of sea level, ozone layer fluctuation, and most importantly, it has raised the global apprehension in lowering global food production. Abiotic stress is one of the major factors influencing overall performance of crop plants. The response of crop plant due to environmental alteration could be effective due to the accumulation of compatible solutes or osmoprotetctants, which contain amino acids, polyamines, sugar, and quaternary ammonium compounds. Compatible solutes play important role in mitigating the adverse effect of abiotic stresses in plants. Compatible solutes are low molecular weight compounds stabilizing cellular structure and scavenging reactive oxygen species (ROS) during abiotic stress conditions. The role of compatible solutes is very important in plant growth and development, i.e., glycinebetaine (GB) is helpful in maintaining osmotic potential, protecting proteins from denaturation and restoration of photosystem II complex (PSII) in plants. The biosynthesis of compatible solutes is important in plants especially adapting under stressful environment, in stabilizing the structure of PSII by protecting extrinsic proteins, and the introgression of genes associated with osmoprotactants from one plant to another by genetic engineering.