Salt Stress Threshold in Millets: Perspective on Cultivation on Marginal Lands for Biomass

Abstract

Millets hold an immense assurance for food safety and nourishment amid ever-rising agricultural expenses and climate alterations. They are healthful, have supplementary wellbeing profit and need remarkably fewer effort overheads for crop growing. These characters draw attention to millets as a plant of preference for the humankind in the course of emergent alarm about environmental changes. Millets have the prospect to provide biomass and thus bioenergy, reduced carbon emission, carbon footprint and sustainable modern agriculture. As the rate of expansion in budding countries is increasing day by day, the scarcity of energy is a big panic and there is a mounting turn in the direction and rehearsal of waste and biomass as an energy source. Globally, at least 20% of total irrigated land has been injured by salt and 1.5 million hectares is taken away of cultivation every year. Thus, in future, we will have a requirement of efficient crops and utilisation of marginal lands for agriculture. Millet is an answer to the efficient crop. Plants are subjected to various environmental pressures (high/low temperature, heavy metal, salinity, pesticides, etc.) as well as biotic stresses (virus, bacteria, fungi, etc.) and millets are not an exception to it. Millets are categorised as glycophytes and can tolerate average salt threshold of about 6 (EC e ) (dS/m) with some variation from specie to specie. Increase in the salt concentrations can lead to retarded growth and development, thus need for mitigants arise to reduce such stresses. Some mitigants to overcome the stress levels include proline, polyamine and betaines, Na 2 SeO 3 , H 2 S, KNO 3 , Mg(NO 3 ) 2 , etc.

Foliar Spray of Alpha-Tocopherol Modulates Antioxidant Potential of Okra Fruit under Salt Stress

“…A 90% loss (6.5 dSm −1 ) in okra yield has been reported under high salt levels [ 3 ]. Soil salinity is one of the most prominent obstacles suppressing plant productivity.…”

Selenate and selenite transporters in proso millet: Genome extensive detection and expression studies under salt stress and selenium

“…In wheat, selenium and sulfur in involved in the mitigation of abiotic stress (Khan et al, 2015). Various similar studies revealed the role of selenium in abiotic stress mitigation (Hasanuzzaman et al, 2020;Shah et al, 2020;Mushtaq et al, 2021;Taha et al, 2021;Saleem et al, 2021;Rasool et al, 2022).…”

“…About ten thousand years ago, it originated in Northern China as a prime domesticated plant of the Poaceae family ( Li et al., 2021 ). Crops are susceptible to a variety of stresses like toxic metals, fluctuating temperatures, pesticides, salinity as well as biotic stresses and millets are no exception to these stresses ( Li et al., 2021 ; Mushtaq et al., 2021 ). Proso millet has the advantage of being a skillful propagator in poor environmental conditions, places where other crops have meagre chances of growth ( Nazir et al., 2021 ).…”

Effect of Salt Stress on the Germination and Early Seedling Growth in Okra (Abelmoschus esculentus)

“…Oil of okra is greenish yellow in color that can be used as bio fuel (Anwar et al, 2010;Ayub et al, 2018). A 90% loss (6.5 dSm -1 ) in okra yield has been reported under high salt levels worldwide (Mushtaq et al, 2020). In Pakistan okra is facing abiotic and biotic stresses like other crops.…”