Drought and Salt Tolerance in Plants

TLDR

Agricultural productivity worldwide is increasingly threatened by drought and salinity, which are widespread and highly impactful, and while traditional breeding has had limited success due to the multigenic nature of tolerance, model and tolerant species such as Arabidopsis and extremophiles are being used to dissect the underlying mechanisms. This review aims to describe plant responses to salt and water stress, outline the regulatory circuits that enable coping, and discuss how current knowledge can be leveraged to develop tolerant plants. The authors synthesize evidence on stress‑responsive regulatory networks and evaluate strategies for translating these insights into breeding or biotechnological interventions for drought and salt tolerance.

Abstract

Agricultural productivity worldwide is subject to increasing environmental constraints, particularly to drought and salinity due to their high magnitude of impact and wide distribution. Traditional breeding programs trying to improve abiotic stress tolerance have had some success, but are limited by the multigenic nature of the trait. Tolerant plants such as Craterostigma plantagenium, Mesembryanthemum crystallinum, Thellungiella halophila and other hardy plants could be valuable tools to dissect the extreme tolerance nature. In the last decade, Arabidopsis thaliana, a genetic model plant, has been extensively used for unravelling the molecular basis of stress tolerance. Arabidopsis also proved to be extremely important for assessing functions for individual stress-associated genes due to the availability of knock-out mutants and its amenability for genetic transformation. In this review, the responses of plants to salt and water stress are described, the regulatory circuits which allow plants to cope with stress are presented, and how the present knowledge can be applied to obtain tolerant plants is discussed.