Abiotic stress largely reduces wheat production globally. Extreme abiotic stressors, such as drought, high temperatures, salinity, cold, waterlogging, etc., and biotic stress like insects-pests, and diseases decrease the yield of wheat in the least developed and developing countries by 20-30%, according to recent projections by the ICARDA, CIMMYT, OECD, and FAO (Islam et al. 2016). According to Zhao et al. (2017), if crops aren’t genetically enhanced for heat, drought, salinity, cold, etc., resilience, here’s the predicted yield of 6% loss of wheat for each 1°C temperature increase. In addition, if anthropogenic activities continue to cause global warming, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts a 6.4°C temperature will rise by the end of the century, and the sea level will rise by 59 cm as a result of glacier melting same time (IPCC 2014). Climate change can increase floods, droughts, storms, and precipitation patterns, etc. Since agriculture is climate-sensitive, temperature, humidity, and rainfall affect crop yield (Atanga and Tankpa 2021). A major cereal crop known as wheat (
Triticum aestivum L.) is grown around the world in various agro-ecologies (Abhinandan et al. 2018). According to forecasts, there will be 60% rise in demand for wheat in 2050 to feed the expected 9.7 billion people on the planet (Yadav et al. 2020). It is widely grown in almost all continents, such as Asia, Africa, Europe, Australia, and America. Drought stress affects crops’ growth and development. Dryness during early growth reduces wheat seedling stand establishment and tiller production. Mid-growth droughts reduce dry matter output, productive tillers, and grains per plant (Dudziak et al. 2019; Gull et al. 2019). Drought during terminal growth reduces grain weight, fertility, and absorption, killing wheat. Drought stress disrupts antioxidant defenses and ROS generation. During prolonged water stress, chloroplast ROS production degrades the wheat photosynthetic system (Dudziak et al. 2019). Malondialdehyde (MDA) generation may indicate ROS-induced oxidative damage. Wheat cells’ high H
2O
2 and MDA levels inhibit drought-induced oxidative stress tolerance (Djanaguiraman et al. 2020; Rath et al. 2022). Wheat ripens best around 14-15°C, although grain weight decreases at 25°C. Diurnal temperature variation under a changing environment results in yield loss (Alam et al. 2013c; Raza et al. 2019; Hossain et al. 2020). Grain filling, formation, yield loss, and spike yield decrease with temperature. Extreme weather occurrences like frost (0°C) and heat shock (brief periods of very high temperatures (>33°C) pose a significant risk to crop productivity (Alam et al. 2014; Mukherjee et al. 2019). Salinity affects 20% of the world’s arable land, and anthropogenic and environmental changes are growing daily. 33% of irrigated agricultural land and 20% of peripheral areas have excessive salinity, as estimated by Chele et al. (2021). Saline soil is one with an electrical conductivity of the saturation extract at the root zone greater than 4 dS/m (approximately 40 mM NaCl) and an exchangeable salt content greater than 15% (Shrivastava and Kumar 2015). High soil salt concentration reduces leaf water potential, decreases turgor pressure due to osmotic imbalance, closes stomata, decreases CO
2 conductivity, affects photosynthetic rate, chlorophyll (Chl) content, carotenoids, membrane variability, cell wall integrity, oxidative stress due to increased ROS production, and increases toxic metabolites. This may damage DNA, RNA, proteins, and lipids, impede plant function, and kill the plants (Turkan 2018; Alam et al. 2021). Stress activates enzymatic, structural, and regulatory genes. Transgenic investigations started with single-action genes. The first targets were water channel proteins, osmolyte biosynthesis (proline, betaine, sugars like trehalose, and polyamines), detoxifying enzymes, and transport proteins. However, stress tolerance is regulated by multiple genes simultaneously, thus single-gene tolerance is implausible. Plants have stress-induced regulatory genes. One gene can regulate many stress-related proteins. In all species, temperature boosts HSP transcription (Chen et al. 2023). Stress converts a non-DNA-binding monomeric form of
HSF into a DNA-binding trimeric form (
Table 1). High temperatures create
HSPs (ul Haq et al. 2019). Transgenic plants with higher plastid Elongation factor-thermal unstable (EF-Tu) reduced thylakoid membrane damage and boosted photosynthetic rate and grain yield during high-temperature stress. EF-Tu may protect photosynthetic membranes and photosynthesis-related enzymes from high-temperature stress, boosting CO
2 fixation. Detox gene overexpression of
CBF1/DREB1B genes increased rice, wheat, and canola’s temperature tolerance (
Table 1) (Djanaguiraman et al. 2020). Co-expression of
Escherichia coli P5C biosynthetic enzymes GK74 and GPR in Arabidopsis and tobacco increased proline biosynthesis. Transgenic plants have increased high-temperature stress tolerance due to cell wall proline-rich proteins. Simultaneous co-expression of DHAR, GR or GST, and GR in tobacco plants boosted temperature stress tolerance (
Table 1) (Reguera et al. 2012). ROS are poisonous molecules that can cause oxidative damage to lipids, proteins, and DNA. Overexpression of Mn-superoxide dismutase in wheat increased temperature tolerance and field yields. APX and CAT detoxify H
2O
2. The
cAPX gene improves tomato’s heat tolerance (Chen et al. 2023). Combining antioxidant enzyme expression may improve high-temperature stress resistance. Constitutive expression of
MBF1c in
Arabidopsis thaliana increases transgenic plants’ tolerance to bacterial infection, high temperature, and osmotic stress. Enhanced transgenic plant resistance to osmotic and high-temperature stress was maintained when combined (Tian et al. 2013). Transcriptomic profiling and inhibitor experiments reveal that
MBF1c expression increases transgenic plant tolerance to high temperature and osmotic stress by partially activating the ethylene-response signal transduction system (Ma et al. 2024). Katiyar-Agarwal et al. (2003) improved a high-temperature-tolerant transgenic rice line (
Pusa basmati). The findings showed that almost all transgenic plants recovered after 45-50°C heat stress and grew vigorously at 28°C, while untransformed plants did not. Overexpressing
sHSP17.7 produces high-temperature-tolerant rice plants. mtHSP70 overexpression reduces programmed cell death in rice protoplasts via preserving mitochondrial membrane potential and limiting ROS signal amplification (Murakami et al. 2004). Abiotic stress induces ROS/RNS, MDA, electrolyte leakage, and metabolite production resulting in an imbalance of radicles found in plant cells, called oxidative stress. During oxidative stress carbohydrates, proteins, fatty acids, DNA, and RNA bases of plants are broken down, ultimately uneven plant growth producing the reduced yield and contributing characteristics of wheat, and resulting in poor grain yield (Alam et al. 2013c; Hossain et al. 2020). This review provokes how abiotic stresses affect the morphological, physiological, biochemical, and genetic levels of wheat crops, as well as their mitigation strategies.