Avenues for increasing salt tolerance of crops

Abstract

There is considerable genetic variation in transport processes controlling the uptake and accumulation of Na+ and K+ that is yet to be utilised for increasing the salt tolerance of crop species. With an understanding of the function of these transporters at the whole plant level, this genetic variation can be exploited for developing molecular markers to track the introduction of salt tolerant germplasm into current cultivars by conventional breeding methods, and for identifying genes that can be used for transformation when salt tolerance in closely related germplasm cannot be found.