1. Introduction 2. LITERATURE REVIEW Salinity tolerance in plants: Breeding and genetic engineering Plants are subjected to various abiotic stresses such as low temperature, salt, drought, floods, heat, oxidative stress and heavy metal toxicity during their life cycle. Among all this, salinity is the most typical abiotic stress (Mahajan and Tuteja 2005). Salinity has negative impact on agricultural productivity affecting plant growth and restricting the use of land. It is estimated that 6% of the world’s total land and 20% of the world’s irrigated areas are affected by salinity (Unesco Water Portal 2007). World population is increasing at an alarming rate and is supposed to reach nine billion by 2050, but our food production is limited (Varshney et al., 2011). As green revolution has already reached its ceiling, there is a major concern over food supply for the ever increasing world population. Rapidly shrinking agricultural land, due to industrialization and/or habitat use is a major threat to sustainable food production. In light of all this, it is almost imperative to raise salt tolerant plants to effectively use salt affected agricultural land for sustainable crop production. Salinity is a soil condition characterized by a high concentration of soluble salts (Munns and Tester, 2008). Evaluating salt tolerance of wheat genotypes using multiple parameters Egypt is one of the countries that suffer from severe salinity problems. For example, 33% of the cultivated land, which comprises only 3% of total land area in Egypt, is already salinized due to low precipitation (
Posted on: Sun, 14 Dec 2014 07:00:26 +0000
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