A critical review on halophytes: Salt tolerant plants

Abstract

Present work deals with the different mechanisms which are present in salt tolerant plants against high salt concentrations of the soil by combining information from different research papers to make a comprehensive account of halophytes. It covers all the aspects of halophytes regarding their classification, mechanisms against high salt concentrations (both at physiological and molecular level). Furthermore, the article discusses the importance of halophytes and some aspects regarding the transformation of non-salt tolerant plants to salt tolerant plants. ~400 million hectares land is affected by salinity and this area is increasing day by day due to excessive irrigation practices also the world population is tremendously increasing hence we need a large amount of food supply. The crops cannot be grown on a salt affected land but nature has provided us with a unique group of plants that is, halophytes. Owing to the consumption of fossil fuels we need the fuel that can be obtained from plants and halophytes can be a good approach in this respect. They can be grown on salt affected lands, by identifying the genes present in them functioning against salinity production of transgenic crops can be done.

Influencia de la salinidad sobre el desarrollo de seis especies forrajeras en dos técnicas de implementación, cuenca baja del Río Lauca

“…species was superior of all, which reached 109.33 and 107.63 kg ha -1 respectively, the species that had the lowest development in both PH and NM, was the one that presented the lowest DM with 41.00 and 37.00 kg ha -1 respectively (table 2). When the content of the salts in the soil solution is higher than the water content of the plant cells, the roots cannot absorb the water from the soil, which is consistent with the claims that salts cause alterations in various physiological and metabolic processes due to ionic imbalance and osmotic stress, these effects reduce the development and production of biomass [88][89][90][91][92][93][94][95][96][97] . The salts considerably reduce the amount of adsorbent hairs, because of this reduction the absorption of water and nutrients from the soil solution is affectted, which affects the biomass.…”

Threshold Tolerance of New Genotypes of Pennisetum glaucum (L.) R. Br. to Salinity and Drought

“…Salinity (combined effects of osmotic and ionic stresses) at 200 mM NaCl (NaCl (1)) caused a significant twofold reduction in the growth parameters (Figure 2c,d). Because a PEG-induced osmotic stress with a similar osmotic potential caused no decrease in these growth parameters, we believe the toxic actions of ions resulted in the growth reduction [11,34]. The HHVBC Tall line was more sensitive to ionic stress, having significantly higher proline content (Figure 3e).…”

Halophytes: Potential Resources for Salt Stress Tolerance Genes and Promoters

“…Generally, halophytes follow three mechanisms of salt tolerance; reduction of the Na + influx, compartmentalization, and excretion of sodium ions (Flowers and Colmer, 2008, 2015). Adaptations involved in salt avoidance are secretion, shedding, and succulence (discussed in Waisel, 1972; Rozema, 1995; Aslam et al, 2011; Shabala et al, 2014). In brief, secretion is a complex mechanism, and salt-secreting structures (salt hairs or salt glands) are distributed in halophytes.…”

“…Halophytes have been studied extensively for their ecological, physiological, anatomical, and biochemical responses toward salinity (Flowers and Colmer, 2008; Aslam et al, 2011; Shabala, 2013; Ventura et al, 2015). Furthermore, halophytes were also explored for saline agriculture and examined as bioenergy crop (Rozema and Schat, 2013; Sharma et al, 2016).…”