Revisiting the role of MAPK signalling pathway in plants and its manipulation for crop improvement.

The mitogen‐activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway is an important signalling event associated with every aspect of plant growth, development, yield, abiotic and biotic stress adaptation. Being a central metabolic pathway, it is a vital target for manipulation for crop improvement. In this review, we have summarised recent advancements in understanding involvement of MAPK signalling in modulating abiotic and biotic stress tolerance, architecture and yield of plants. MAPK signalling cross talks with reactive oxygen species (ROS) and abscisic acid (ABA) signalling events in bringing about abiotic stress adaptation in plants. The intricate involvement of MAPK pathway with plant's pathogen defence ability has also been identified. Further, recent research findings point towards participation of MAPK signalling in shaping plant architecture and yield. These make MAPK pathway an important target for crop improvement and we discuss here various strategies to tweak MAPK signalling components for designing future crops with improved physiology and phenotypes. Summary Statement: To the best of our knowledge, the proposed review article is first of its kind which has comprehensively discussed involvement of mitogen‐activated protein kinase (MAPK) signalling cascade in abiotic and biotic stress tolerance as well as plant development and crop yield in a single article. Additionally, one of the novel features of this review is that it has also discussed the ways to manipulate the MAPK signalling components for designing crops for improved stress resilience as well as yield. Climate change, rapid decline in lands arable lands and population explosion necessitates revisiting the role of a very important central metabolic pathway (i.e., MAPK signalling module) for achieving crop improvement and stress adaption in plants and in our present review; we have tried to address it to the best possible extent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]