The Potential of Endophytes in Improving Salt–Alkali Tolerance and Salinity Resistance in Plants

Abstract

Ensuring food security for the global population is a ceaseless and critical issue. However, high-salinity and high-alkalinity levels can harm agricultural yields throughout large areas, even in largely agricultural countries, such as China. Various physical and chemical treatments have been employed in different locations to mitigate high salinity and alkalinity but their effects have been minimal. Numerous researchers have recently focused on developing effective and environmentally friendly biological treatments. Endophytes, which are naturally occurring and abundant in plants, retain many of the same characteristics of plants owing to their simultaneous evolution. Therefore, extraction of endophytes from salt-tolerant plants for managing plant growth in saline–alkali soils has become an important research topic. This extraction indicates that the soil environment can be fundamentally improved, and the signaling pathways of plants can be altered to increase their defense capacity, and can even be inherited to ensure lasting efficacy. This study discusses the direct and indirect means by which plant endophytes mitigate the effects of plant salinity stress that have been observed in recent years.

Response of the metabolic activity and taxonomic composition of bacterial communities to mosaically varying soil salinity and alkalinity

“…This study provides a description of the bacterial communities in soils with different levels of salinity and sodicity, which could provide a starting point for restoring these fragile habitats 72 . Most likely, the most significant agricultural application is the isolation of haloalkalitolerant bacteria from saline-alkaline environments with plant growth-promoting properties to support crop plant health and resistance against soil salinity [73][74][75] .…”

Stress tolerance activity and diversification of endophytic fungi from the medicinal plant Abutilon indicum

“…According to Khalvandi et al (2021) [42] reported as M. piperita plants were grown with S. indica and exposed to 9 dS/m of salt stress, their Na+ level dropped by 54.37% compared to plants that were not infected. While the exact methods via which endophytes enhance salt tolerance in their host plants remain unclear, it is hypothesized that this process may involve the production of stress-responsive hormones in the host, the activation of stress-responsive genes in the host [43], and the active maintenance of a low ratio of sodium (Na + ) to potassium (K + ) [44,45]. Our study revealed that endophytic fungi demonstrated the highest resilience to salt stress when grown on PDA plates with varied concentrations of NaCl, as evidenced by their maximal colony growth rate.…”