Wild Halophytes: Tools for Understanding Salt Tolerance Mechanisms of Plants and for Adapting Agriculture to Climate Change

Dear Colleagues,

Climate change represents a major challenge for agriculture and food security in the coming years. Soil salinity is, together with drought, one of the major causes of the reduction of crop yields worldwide, and climate change is contributing to the increasing loss of irrigated cropland due to secondary salinization, especially in arid and semiarid regions. The most promising strategy to address this problem should be based on the genetic improvement of crop salt tolerance. This, in turn, requires a deep understanding of the mechanisms underlying salt tolerance. Paradoxically, most studies on plant salt tolerance have been carried out using non-tolerant model species, such as Arabidopsis thaliana. Besides, even though tolerance is based on a series of conserved responses to salt stress – control of ion transport, osmolyte biosynthesis, and activation of antioxidant systems – the specific mechanisms of tolerance can vary widely in different species. Therefore, no single model will provide enough information.

All major crops are glycophytes, sensitive to relatively low levels of salt in the soil. The halophytes, on the contrary, are adapted to natural saline environments and are able to survive and complete their life cycle in habitats with soil salinity equivalent to 200 mM NaCl, or even higher, close to that of seawater. Halophytes are, therefore, ideal materials for basic studies of salt tolerance mechanisms in plants, at the physiological, biochemical, and molecular levels. Apart from being a source of knowledge, halophytes can also provide biotechnological tools – salt-tolerance genes and salt-induced promoters – for the genetic improvement of salt tolerance of conventional crops. Furthermore, some halophytes could represent the basis of a sustainable ‘saline agriculture’, being commercially grown in salinized land and irrigated with brackish or saline water. This Special Issue will cover all of the aforementioned basic and applied aspects of halophytes research, reflected in original research articles, reviews, mini-reviews, and opinion papers.

Prof. Dr. Óscar Vicente
Dr. Marius-Nicusor Grigore‬
Guest Editors

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