2023, Vol. 11, Issue 2, Part B

Plants cannot escape the numerous abiotic stresses such as drought, cold, heat, and salinity that prevent them from growing and developing under ideal conditions because they have a sessile lifestyle. One of the most damaging abiotic factors impacting temperate plants is low temperature. Plants that are exposed to low temperatures undergo a process called "cold acclimation," which ultimately increases their freezing tolerance. Abiotic stress factors depend on the production of particular genes and metabolites which are stress-related. To recognize cold stress, the cell membrane either modifies the fluidity of the membrane or uses sensory proteins. Plants also gather a variety of low-molecular-weight osmolytes during cold stress that helps the plant to survive, by maintaining proteins and membrane stability and aiding to control the osmotic pressure inside the cells. These osmoprotectants include sugar alcohols (sorbitol, inositol, and ribitol), low-molecular-weight nitrogenous compounds (i.e., proline and glycine betaine) and soluble sugars (saccharose, raffinose, trehalose, stachyose). Further research data showed that the plasma membrane is protected by additional solutes that are produced from the symplast against ice adherence and consequent cell damage in plant cells.