Developing salt-tolerant crop plants: challenges and opportunities

Soil salinity, one of the major abiotic stresses reducing agricultural productivity, affects large terrestrial areas of the world; the need to produce salt-tolerant crops is evident. Two main approaches are being used to improve salt tolerance: (i) the exploitation of natural genetic variations, eit...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Trends in plant science 2005-12, Vol.10 (12), p.615-620
Main Authors: Yamaguchi, Toshio, Blumwald, Eduardo
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adaptation to environment and cultivation conditions
Adaptation, Physiological
Agronomy. Soil science and plant productions
Biological and medical sciences
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Genetics and breeding of economic plants
literature reviews
plant breeding
plant genetics
Plants, Genetically Modified - genetics
salt stress
salt tolerance
Sodium Chloride
soil nutrients
soil salinity
transgenic plants
Varietal selection. Specialized plant breeding, plant breeding aims
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Summary:Soil salinity, one of the major abiotic stresses reducing agricultural productivity, affects large terrestrial areas of the world; the need to produce salt-tolerant crops is evident. Two main approaches are being used to improve salt tolerance: (i) the exploitation of natural genetic variations, either through direct selection in stressful environments or through mapping quantitative trait loci and subsequent marker-assisted selection; and (ii) the generation of transgenic plants to introduce novel genes or to alter expression levels of the existing genes to affect the degree of salt stress tolerance. Here, we discuss the challenges and opportunities provided by recently developed functional tools for the development of salt-tolerant crops.
ISSN:1360-1385
1878-4372
DOI:10.1016/j.tplants.2005.10.002