Growing wheat on saline lands: can a dream come true?

Abstract

Wheat is the third largest cereal produced in the world and it supplies over 20% of calories in human food around the globe. Wheat production and productivity directly influence human survival in developing countries and quality of life in industrial countries. World population is growing at a very rapid pace. It is one of the biggest concerns for current and future food supply due to limitations in the availability of land for agricultural production. The land available for cultivation is also affected by progressive salinization. Food security can only be mitigated by continuous increase in production and productivity of major crops like wheat. Utilization of saline land for wheat production is one of the important strategies to enhance production. Wheat and its wild relatives possess ample diversity for abiotic stresses, especially salt tolerance, however, limited research has been conducted to explore salt tolerance mechanism and its utilization in current and future wheat production. Current review has focused mainly on progressive salinity issues in agricultural land, salt tolerance mechanism in wheat and existence of genetic diversity in wild relatives of wheat and its utilization in breeding for salt tolerance. In addition, this review has highlighted different conventional, molecular and advance genomic strategies to enhance salt tolerance in wheat. Current status of available molecular markers, marker assisted selection/breeding and transgenic approaches for salt tolerance in wheat is discussed along with challenges and future research direction that could be directly employed in wheat breeding programs globally to enhance wheat production.