BIOLOGICAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL STRATEGIES AGAINST SOIL AND WATER SALINIZATION II—PLANT

Abstract

The work comes to complete an overview, which started with a review about the actions on the rhizosphere, over the main strategies to induce salt stress resistance in horticultural crops that have been developed during the last twenty years. The techniques presented here aim at an induction of resistance to saline stress in the plant organism by operating directly on its metabolism, so that the plant can face higher salt levels in the rhizospheric environment. In particular the use of tolerant genotypes, as can be produced by techniques of molecular biology, is the most studied and is showing an increasing number of new possible applications, but these are subordinated to a deeper understanding of the molecular basis of salt adaptation and salt tolerance. The scarce social acceptance of genetically-engineered crops is another obstacle to their applicability on a large scale. Growth regulators can give a wide range of results depending on the compounds that are used; a new and possibly promising perspective is given by the use of some molecules in plant defenseinduction models. Silicon application is also especially interesting for its effectiveness and for its physiological implication at roots level, and the technique does not present drawbacks connected with an undesired accumulation of the product in the soil in the medium-long term.

Keywords:

• salinity
• resistance
• crops
• plant