Opportunities to genetically modify plants to cope with environmental stress

Discusses the responses of plants to a variety of environmental stresses and considers different techniques that could potentially be used to detect and amplify such responses. Because plants may naturally produce steroids in response to raised stress levels, the paper suggests that genetic modification of crop plants to improve resistance to stress is worth investigating as a strategy. Sensitive to public concerns about the safety of transgenic crops, the authors suggest using such plants in carefully controlled locations.