Trehalose is a rare sugar with unique abilities to protect biomolecules from environmental stresses and is present in many bacteria, fungi and some desiccationtolerant higher plants. Increasing trehalose accumulation in crop plants could improve drought and salinity tolerance. Transgenic plants have been developed with trehalose biosynthetic genes – a recent study on the stress-inducible overexpression of the bifunctional TPSP fusion gene in transgenic rice could offer novel strategies for improving abiotic stress tolerance in crop plants.