title: Salt resistant crop plants.
abstract: Soil salinity is a major constraint to agriculture. To improve salinity tolerance of crops, various traits can be incorporated, including ion exclusion, osmotic tolerance and tissue tolerance. We review the roles of a range of genes involved in salt tolerance traits. Different tissues and cells are adapted for specific and often diverse function, so it is important to express the genes in specific cell-types and to pyramid a range of traits. Modern biotechnology (marker-assisted selection or genetic engineering) needs to be increasingly used to introduce the correct combination of genes into elite crop cultivars. Importantly, the effects of introduced genes need to be evaluated in the field to determine their effect on salinity tolerance and yield improvement.
authors.affiliation: Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics, School of Agriculture, Food and Wine, University of Adelaide, Urrbrae, SA 5064, Australia.
authors.forename: Stuart J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Roy
authors.affiliation: Instituto de Tecnologia Química e Biológica, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Genomics of Plant Stress Laboratory (GPlantS Lab), Av. da República, 2780-157 Oeiras, Portugal; Center for Desert Agriculture, Division of Biological and Environmental Sciences and Engineering, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Thuwal 23955-6900, Saudi Arabia.
authors.forename: Sónia
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Negrão
authors.affiliation: Center for Desert Agriculture, Division of Biological and Environmental Sciences and Engineering, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Thuwal 23955-6900, Saudi Arabia. Electronic address: mark.tester@kaust.edu.sa.
authors.forename: Mark
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Tester
mesh_terms: D018556:Crops, Agricultural / Q000166:cytology / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism*; D018506:Gene Expression Regulation, Plant / Q000235:genetics; D009994:Osmolar Concentration; D010641:Phenotype; D054712:Salinity; D055051:Salt-Tolerant Plants / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism*; D015398:Signal Transduction / Q000235:genetics; D012987:Soil / Q000737:chemistry; D062211:Spatio-Temporal Analysis; D019076:Transgenes / Q000235:genetics
chemical_list: D012987:Soil