Drought and Salt Tolerance in Plants

• Published in: Critical reviews in plant sciences Vol. 24; no. 1; pp. 23 - 58
• Main Authors: Bartels, Dorothea, Sunkar, Ramanjulu
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Colchester Taylor & Francis Group 01.01.2005; Taylor & Francis; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: ABA; Agronomy. Soil science and plant productions; Biological and medical sciences; dehydration; Drought; Economic plant physiology; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Physical agents; Plant physiology and development; plant stress tolerance; salinity; Salt tolerance; transgenic plants; Vegetative apparatus, growth and morphogenesis. Senescence; Water relations, transpiration, stomata; Vegetals; Tolerance; Aizoaceae; Review; Stress; Salinity; Arabidopsis thaliana; Mesembryanthemum crystallinum; Cruciferae; Dicotyledones; Angiospermae; Genetic improvement; Spermatophyta; Transgenic plant; Mechanism of action
• ISSN: 0735-2689; 1549-7836
• DOI: 10.1080/07352680590910410

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.