TYPE Mini Review PUBLISHED 23 September 2022 DOI 10.3389/fpls.2022.926214 OPEN ACCESS EDITED BY Andrea Miyasaka Almeida, Universidad Mayor, Chile REVIEWED BY Allah Wasaya, Bahauddin Zakariya University, Pakistan Luis Duque, The Pennsylvania State University (PSU), United States *CORRESPONDENCE Jagesh Kumar Tiwari jageshtiwari@gmail.com † PRESENT ADDRESSES Jagesh Kumar Tiwari, Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR)-Indian Institute of Vegetable Research, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India Rajesh K. Singh, Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR)-Indian Institute of Vegetable Research, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India Anuj K. Poonia, Institute of Biotechnology, Chandigarh University, Mohali, Punjab, India SPECIALTY SECTION This article was submitted to Plant Abiotic Stress, a section of the journal Frontiers in Plant Science RECEIVED 22 April 2022 ACCEPTED 25 August 2022 PUBLISHED 23 September 2022 CITATION Zinta R, Tiwari JK, Buckseth T, Thakur K, Goutam U, Kumar D, Challam C, Bhatia N, Poonia AK, Naik S, Singh RK, Thakur AK, Dalamu D, Luthra SK, Kumar V and Kumar M (2022) Root system architecture for abiotic stress tolerance in potato: Lessons from plants. Front. Plant Sci. 13:926214. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2022.926214 COPYRIGHT © 2022 Zinta, Tiwari, Buckseth, Thakur, Goutam, Kumar, Challam, Bhatia, Poonia, Naik, Singh, Thakur, Dalamu, Luthra, Kumar and Kumar. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Root system architecture for abiotic stress tolerance in potato: Lessons from plants Rasna Zinta 1,2 , Jagesh Kumar Tiwari 1 * † , Tanuja Buckseth 1 , Kanika Thakur 1 , Umesh Goutam 2 , Devendra Kumar 3 , Clarissa Challam 4 , Nisha Bhatia 1,5 , Anuj K. Poonia 5† , Sharmistha Naik 1,6 , Rajesh K. Singh 1† , Ajay K. Thakur 1 , Dalamu Dalamu 1 , Satish K. Luthra 3 , Vinod Kumar 1 and Manoj Kumar 3 1 Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR)-Central Potato Research Institute, Shimla, Himachal Pradesh, India, 2 Lovely Professional University, Phagwada, Punjab, India, 3 Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR)-Central Potato Research Institute, Regional Station, Meerut, India, 4 Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR)-Central Potato Research Institute, Regional Station, Shillong, India, 5 School of Biotechnology, Shoolini University, Solan, Himachal Pradesh, India, 6 Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR)-National Research Centre for Grapes, Pune, Maharashtra, India The root is an important plant organ, which uptakes nutrients and water from the soil, and provides anchorage for the plant. Abiotic stresses like heat, drought, nutrients, salinity, and cold are the major problems of potato cultivation. Substantial research advances have been achieved in cereals and model plants on root system architecture (RSA), and so root ideotype (e.g., maize) have been developed for efficient nutrient capture to enhance nutrient use efficiency along with genes regulating root architecture in plants. However, limited work is available on potatoes, with a few illustrations on root morphology in drought and nitrogen stress. The role of root architecture in potatoes has been investigated to some extent under heat, drought, and nitrogen stresses. Hence, this mini-review aims to update knowledge and prospects of strengthening RSA research by applying multi-disciplinary physiological, biochemical, and molecular approaches to abiotic stress tolerance to potatoes with lessons learned from model plants, cereals, and other plants. KEYWORDS abiotic stress, root system architecture, potato, plant, nitrogen, heat, drought Introduction The root is an integral plant part that provides anchorage, water, and nutrients to the plant. The aboveground plant parts (e.g., stems and leaves) have been widely investigated by several groups worldwide in crops for abiotic stresses like heat and drought tolerance (Tracy et al., 2020; van der Bom et al., 2020), but limited reports are available on underground roots. The root system architecture (RSA) is the 3-dimensional structure of the root system of a plant in soil, and it is highly essential for efficient water and nutrient acquisition and plant growth and development (Lynch, 2019). Although, substantial information has been generated and deployed in cereals for enhancing nutrient use efficiency (Lynch, 2019, 2021) and Frontiers in Plant Science 01 frontiersin.org