Salinity Tolerance In Plants

Soil salinity is a key abiotic-stress and poses serious threats to crop yields and quality of produce. Owing to the underlying complexity, conventional breeding programs have met with limited success. Even genetic engineering approaches, via transferring/overexpressing a single ‘direct action gene’ per event did not yield optimal results. Nevertheless, the biotechnological advents in last decade coupled with the availability of genomic sequences of major crops and model plants have opened new vistas for understanding salinity-responses and improving salinity tolerance in important glycophytic crops. Our goal is to summarize these findings for those who wish to understand and target the molecular mechanisms for producing salt-tolerant and high-yielding crops. Through this 2-volume book series, we critically assess the potential venues for imparting salt stress tolerance to major crops in the post-genomic era. Accordingly, perspectives on improving crop salinity tolerance by targeting the sensory, ion-transport and signaling mechanisms are presented here in volume 1. Volume 2 will focus on the potency of post-genomic era tools that include RNAi, genomic intervention, genome editing and systems biology approaches for producing salt tolerant crops.

Salinity stress currently impacts more than 80 million hectares of land worldwide and more arable land is likely to be impacted in the future due to global climate changes. Managing Salt Tolerance in Plants: Molecular and Genomic Perspectives presents detailed molecular and genomic approaches for the development of crop plants tolerant to salinity

Soil salinity is destroying several hectares of arable land every minute. Because remedial land management cannot completely solve the problem, salt tolerant crops or plant species able to remove excessive salt from the soil could contribute significantly to managing the salinity problem. The key to engineering crops for salt tolerance lies in a thorough understanding of the physiological mechanisms underlying the adaptive responses of plants to salinity. Plant Salt Tolerance: Methods and Protocols describes recent advances and techniques employed by researchers to understand the molecular and ionic basis of salinity tolerance and to investigate the mechanisms of salt stress perception and signalling in plants. With chapters written by leading international scientists, this book covers nearly 30 different methods, such as microelectrode and molecular methods, imaging techniques, as well as various biochemical assays. Written in the highly successful Methods in Molecular BiologyTM series format, chapters contain introductions to their respective topics, lists of the necessary materials and reagents, step-by-step, readily reproducible laboratory protocols, and notes on troubleshooting and avoiding known pitfalls. Authoritative and easily accessible, Plant Salt Tolerance: Methods and Protocols serves as an essential read for every student or researcher tackling various aspects of the salinity problem.

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This book presents various aspects of salt and drought stress signaling in crops, combining physiological, biochemical, and molecular studies. Salt and drought stress are two major constraints on crop production worldwide. Plants possess several mechanisms to cope with the adverse effects of salt and drought. Among these mechanisms, stress signaling is very important, because it integrates and regulates nuclear gene expression and other cellular activities, which can help to restore cellular homeostasis. Accordingly, understanding the signaling cascades will help plant biologists to grasp the tolerance mechanisms that allow breeders to develop tolerant crop varieties. This book is an essential resource for researchers and graduate students working on salt and drought stress physiology and plant breeding.

The halophytes are highly specialized plants, which have greater tolerance to salt. They can germinate, grow and reproduce successfully in saline areas which would cause the death of regular plants. Most halophytic species are found in salt marsh systems along seashores or around landlocked inland lakes and flat plains with high evaporation. The halophytes play very significant role in the saline areas specially in the coast by overcoming the salinity in different ways, viz. with regulating mechanisms in which excess salts are excreted and with out regulating mechanism, which may include succulents or cumulative types. Besides that they protect coast from erosion and cyclones, provide feeding ground and nursery for fish, shrimps and birds. Halophytes get increasing attention today because of the steady increase of the salinity in irrigation systems in the arid and semi-arid regions where the increasing population reaches the limits of freshwater availability. In many countries, halophytes have been successfully grown on saline wasteland to provide animal fodder and have the potential for rehabilitation and even reclamation of these sites. The value of certain salt-tolerant grass species has been recognized by their incorporation in pasture improvement programs in many salt affected regions throughout the world. There have been recent advances in selecting species with high biomass and protein levels in combination with their ability to survive a wide range of environmental conditions, including salinity.

Salt stress is one of the most damaging abiotic stresses because most crop plants are susceptible to salinity to different degrees. According to the FAO, about 800 million Has of land are affected by salinity worldwide. Unfortunately, this situation will worsen in the context of climate change, where there will be an overall increase in temperature and a decrease in average annual rainfall worldwide. This Special Issue presents different research works and reviews on the response of plants to salinity, focused from different points of view: physiological, biochemical, and molecular levels. Although an important part of the studies on the response to salinity have been carried out with Arabidopsis plants, the use of other species with agronomic interest is also notable, including woody plants. Most of the conducted studies in this Special Issue were focused on the identification and characterization of candidate genes for salt tolerance in higher plants. This identification would provide valuable information about the molecular and genetic mechanisms involved in the salt tolerance response, and it also supplies important resources to breeding programs for salt tolerance in plants.

Salinity tolerance in plants is a complex problem encompassing numerous morphological, physiological and biochemical processes and adaptations at the cellular, sub-cellular and whole plant levels. The book comprising eleven chapters deals with diverse aspects of salt tolerance including plant response to salinity and sodicity, crop tolerance at different growth stages and criteria for evaluating the same. The mechanism of salt injury viz. osmotic, ionic and nutrient imbalance has been dealt with, adopting an integrated appraoch. Likewise, the recent information on photosynthesis, respiration, carbohydrate, nitrogen and protein metabolism, enzyme dynamics and plant hormones, as well as nodulation and symbiotic nitrogen fixation in legumes has been elaborated comprehensively. Special attention has been given to the interaction between essential nutrients and salinity as it is vital for alleviation of adverse effects of salt stress. The synthesis of knowledge on different mechanisms of salt resistance, including osmoregulation with organic and inorganic solutes has also been presented. Various methods of introducing salt tolerance in plants such as breeding, genetic variations, physiological approaches, tissue culture, somaclonal variation, somatic hybridation and recombinat DNA technology have been discussed. The nature and properties of salt affected soils and groundwaters and principles for amelioration and management of these critical problems have been included in this book. Furthermore, Afforestation and Agroforestry techniques for salt affected soils with emphasis on salt tolerant tree species and suitable tree crop combinations also find their much needed due space in the present book.