Smart reprograming of plants against salinity stress using modern biotechnological tools

Abstract

Climate change gives rise to numerous environmental stresses, including soil salinity. Salinity/salt stress is the second biggest abiotic factor affecting agricultural productivity worldwide by damaging numerous physiological, biochemical, and molecular processes. In particular, salinity affects plant growth, development, and productivity. Salinity responses include modulation of ion homeostasis, antioxidant defense system induction, and biosynthesis of numerous phytohormones and osmoprotectants to protect plants from osmotic stress by decreasing ion toxicity and augmented reactive oxygen species scavenging. As most crop plants are sensitive to salinity, improving salt tolerance is crucial in sustaining global agricultural productivity. In response to salinity, plants trigger stress-related genes, proteins, and the accumulation of metabolites to cope with the adverse consequence of salinity. Therefore, this review presents an overview of salinity stress in crop plants. We highlight advances in modern biotechnological tools, such as omics (genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics) approaches and different genome editing tools (ZFN, TALEN, and CRISPR/Cas system) for improving salinity tolerance in plants and accomplish the goal of “zero hunger,” a worldwide sustainable development goal proposed by the FAO.

Keywords:

• Abiotic stress
• climate change
• crop improvement
• genome editing
• omics approaches
• zero hunger

Acknowledgments

AR would like to thank Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University (FAFU), and Fujian Provincial Government for providing Post-doc Research Fellowship. Further, we are grateful to many scientists and colleagues for scientific discussions that have made it possible to develop this up-to-date comprehensive review. The author apologizes to all colleagues whose relevant work could not be cited due to space limitations. RKV is thankful to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, USA and Australia-India Strategic Research Fund from the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India, and also the Food Futures Institute of Murdoch University.

Author contributions

AR, RKV, and WZ conceived the idea. AR, JT, AZF, RS, and RKS contributed to the writing and literature search. AR prepared the figures. AR, JT, and AZF designed the tables. LJ, VF, KS, RKS, RKV, and WZ reviewed and edited the manuscript. All authors have read and approved the final version of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by grants from Bill & Melinda Foundation (Tropical Legumes Project), Food Futures Institute of Murdoch University to RKV and the National Science Foundation (NSF) of China (U1705233 to W.Z.) and Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, Fuzhou, China.