Unravelling signalling steps and metabolic pathways controlling abiotic stress tolerance of plants, provides essential tools for coping with the accumulating negative effects of climate changes in breeding, agriculture and environmental protection. Improvement of efficacy of plant stress tolerance is essential for successful combating salinization, frost damage and desertification in European and also in other non-COST participating countries. Drought, salt and cold tolerance traits of crops are controlled by biological regulatory mechanisms governing the production of highly effective stress-protecting metabolites, including polyamines and proline. The major goal of this COST proposal was to stimulate cutting-edge collaborative research towards understanding the regulatory mechanisms of abiotic stress signalling pathways leading to the production of major stress-protective plant compounds. By stimulating scientific exchange among molecular geneticists, biochemists, plant physiologists and breeders, the network program aims at the identification of key regulators of plant abiotic stress responses and their essential stress-protective end-targets. Keywords: Abiotic stress, plants, signalling pathways, signalling components, transcription factors, osmo-protectants, polyamines
