Physiological and Molecular Approaches for Improving Phosphorus Uptake Efficiency of Crops

Intensive use of phosphorus (P) in agriculture has raised concerns about its sustainability due to potential resource scarcity and its non-judicious use which has led to serious environmental pollution. Plants possess a number of adaptive mechanisms to cope with P stress leading to changes at morphological, physiological, biochemical and molecular levels. A comprehensive understanding of these adaptive responses is required to improve P uptake efficiency, partitioning and utilization, together with other agronomic approaches, which would result in meeting the sustainability challenge of P delivery to crops. The present article briefly covers various plant responses to P stress and molecular strategies that could be used to develop plants efficient in P acquisition.