Plant Defense Mechanisms against Low-Temperature Stress: A Review

Abstract Global climate change, accompanied by more frequent, intense, and prolonged extreme weather events, including those with low temperatures, poses a significant threat to plant growth and productivity. This review addresses the effects of low temperatures on plants and integrates the latest insights into the strategies that plants adopt to protect their structural and functional integrity in cold environments. Exposure to low temperatures negatively impacts plants on both a whole and cellular scale. At the whole-plant scale, cold stress causes a decline in plant growth and alterations in respiration, photosynthesis, and the plant’s water regime. At the cellular scale, it results in cell dehydration, loss of membrane integrity and functionality, enzyme inactivation, and dysfunction of organelles. Plants have evolved two main strategies to adapt to low-temperature stress: stress avoidance and stress tolerance. Low-temperature stress avoidance mechanisms are typically associated with structural changes within the plant that prevent the formation of ice crystals inside the plant cells, whereas tolerance mechanisms are connected to a broad spectrum of physiological and biochemical changes that occur in the plant after it has been exposed to low temperatures. An in-depth understanding of these mechanisms is important for creating strategies that increase crop tolerance to low-temperature stress, leading to more reliable predictions of their responses in cold environments. This review highlights the potential of cold acclimation as a strategy for improving plant tolerance to cold stress.