Although not a crop plant, Arabidopsis has played a vital role in the elucidation of the basic processes underlying stress tolerance, and the knowledge obtained has been transferred to a certain degree to important food plants10. Many of the genes known to be involved in stress tolerance have been isolated initially in Arabidopsis. The introduction of several stress-inducible genes into plants by genetic engineering has resulted to increased tolerance of transgenics to drought, cold and salinity stresses8, 9. Some examples are reviewed in the following section