“…Plants are typically exposed to a broad myriad of biotic and abiotic stresses, including feeding from wild animals and insects, weed infestation, hail, mechanical injury, diseases, low soil fertility, drought, salinity and others that can diminish the plant photosynthetic area, and thus, the attained total plant biomass or grain yield (Adeyemi et al, 2020; Adnan et al, 2020; Battaglia et al, 2018; Battaglia, Lee, Thomason, Fike, et al, 2019; Battaglia, Lee, Thomason, & Van Mullekom, 2019; Diatta, Fike, et al, 2020; Diatta, Thomason, et al, 2020; Farsad et al, 2019; Thomason & Battaglia, 2020) In the case of plants grown in a hot, arid or semi‐arid climate two of the main yield and biomass‐limiting stresses are salinity and drought (Saleem, Ali, Hussain, et al, 2020; Saleem, Ali, Rehman, Hasanuzzaman, et al, 2020; Zamin et al, 2019). In this context, the use of native and perennial C4 plant species, that can remain highly productive in environments with saline soils and recurrent drought periods, is an important strategy to cope against these predominant abiotic stresses in arid and semi‐arid climates (Battaglia, Fike, et al,2019; Khan, Zhang, Luo, Liu, Rizwan, et al, 2019b; Kumar, Lai, Battaglia, et al, 2019; Kumar, Lai, Kumar, et al, 2019; Mohamed et al, 2020). Recent research has shown that native plant species may exhibit stronger tolerance or better and faster mechanisms to adjust or withstand abiotic stress conditions such as drought and salinity stress compared to their cultivated relatives (Saleem, Ali, et al, 2019; Saleem, Rehman, et al,2020; Yaseen et al, 2020).…”