Abstract

Environmental stresses, such as drought, high salinity, and low and high temperature, affect plant growth. Abiotic stresses cause losses worth hundreds of million dollars of agricultural industry each year and extremely decrease crop productivity. Many genes are induced in response to environmental stresses. TheDREB1A gene is a stress-inducible DRE-binding transcription factor that strongly up-regulates many downstream genes, resulting in adaptation of plants to stress conditions and exercise specific tolerance mechanisms, thereby increase efficiency of plants production. In this review, we presented evidences which show that theDREB1A gene can increase tolerance to drought, salinity, heat and low temperature stresses. Given that the molecular control mechanisms of abioticstress tolerance are similar and DREB1A may have effects on majority of them, it is also possible that over-expression of DREB1A leads to production of plants resistant against heavy metal toxicity and harmful rays or mechanical injuries.

Key words: Abiotic stress, DREB1A gene, tolerance plant.