Introduction: Plant Cold Acclimation and Winter Survival.

This introductory chapter provides a brief overview of plant freezing tolerance, cold acclimation, including subzero acclimation, and the subsequent deacclimation when plants return to warm conditions favoring growth and development. We describe the basic concepts and approaches that are currently followed to investigate these phenomena. We highlight the multidisciplinary nature of these investigations and the necessity to use methodologies from different branches of science, such as ecology, genetics, physiology, cell biology, biochemistry, and biophysics to gain a complete understanding of the complex adaptive mechanisms ultimately underlying plant winter survival.