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Salt Tolerance Engineering—Which are the essential mechanisms?

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Concepts in Photobiology

Summary

High soil salinity poses a problem to many agriculturally useable areas in the world and it can be expected that this problem becomes more severe due, mainly, to the need of keeping even marginal land under cultivation and as a consequence of irrigation in arid areas. These facts make it timely that the mechanisms are studied through which salt-tolerant plants can be productive under conditions under which glycophytic crop plants cannot grow. In our work over several years, we have attempted to find and describe mechanisms that have been suggested by physiological studies in the past. Once genes are identified which seem to control such mechanisms, we transfer them into salt-sensitive plants and study whether stress protection, even marginal, can be documented. From such work, and from the work of several other groups, we can deduce that a large number of genes are involved in plant stress tolerance and these fall into five groups that may define five mechanisms. These are (1) the synthesis of osmolytes, likely for osmotic adjustment, (2) the synthesis of enzymes and compounds which enhance the capacity of cells for scavenging of radical oxygen species, (3) the control over potassium uptake in the presence of high amounts of external sodium, (4) control over water uptake (rather, the avoidance of water loss in the presence of sodium), and (5) the acceleration of developmental processes that lead to flowering and seed formation. We will discuss what is known about these mechanisms.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biochemistry, The University of Arizona, Biosciences West, Tucson, AZ, 85721, USA

    Hans J. Bohnert, Dortje Golldack, Manabu Ishitani, Uma R. Kamasani, Gerald Rammesmayer, Bo Shen, Elena Sheveleva & Richard G. Jensen

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  1. Hans J. Bohnert
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  2. Dortje Golldack
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  3. Manabu Ishitani
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  4. Uma R. Kamasani
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  5. Gerald Rammesmayer
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  6. Bo Shen
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  7. Elena Sheveleva
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  8. Richard G. Jensen
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Life Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India

    G. S. Singhal

  2. Technische Universität, Berlin, Germany

    G. Renger  & K.-D. Irrgang  & 

  3. International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, New Delhi, India

    S. K. Sopory

  4. University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA

    Govindjee

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Bohnert, H.J. et al. (1999). Salt Tolerance Engineering—Which are the essential mechanisms?. In: Singhal, G.S., Renger, G., Sopory, S.K., Irrgang, KD., Govindjee (eds) Concepts in Photobiology. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4832-0_21

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4832-0_21

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