Rice: Grappling with Cold under Climatic Changes, Global Impact and Counter Strategies

Rice has been staple food for more than half of the world population and presently it is one of the top three crops cultivated across the world in terms of area and production. Low temperature stress has been a critical factor year after year in determining the yield globally. Since last five decades many tactics there have been developed for countering the effect of low temperature stress in rice, which includes conventional as well as molecular. Here, we have reviewed recent progress in research on cold stress-mediated physiological traits and metabolites; elaborated their roles in the cold-response network and cold-tolerance evaluation. We also have discussed criteria for evaluating cold tolerance, evaluated the scope and shortcomings of each application. In this review, various approaches for cold tolerance are discussed with special reference to Quantitative Trait Loci (QTL).