Brassicaceae Plants Response and Tolerance to Salinity

Abstract

Increasing soil salinity is one of the most important global issues for recent agriculture, which can potentially cut down the total crop productivity. Brassicas or different members of Brassicaceae family are very important components of human food. Interestingly, the members of Brassicaceae family have diverse genetic composition and thus their response and adaptation to salinity differs greatly. Hence, it is necessary to know the morphological, physiological, biochemical, hormonal and molecular responses of Brassica for sustainable production in saline environment. Due to its high economic and nutritional importance, characterization and identification of salt-tolerant genotypes in each of the cultivated species of Brassicaceae is an essential approach formaintaining food production and security. Several techniques are available to identify the tolerant donors of Brassica. However, identification through key morpho-physiological traits along with established molecular markers is still a universal technique. Due to the diverse nature of different members of Brassicaceae family, its salt tolerance response is not universal. Rather, from highly glycophytic to extreme halophytic responses were reported within Brassicaceae family. Understandably, the physiological and molecular responses also vary greatly between different species present in the family. In general, it was reported by several researchers that most of the amphidiploid species in Brassicaceae family were comparatively more salt-tolerant than the diploid members. Looking at the agronomic importance of different Brassicas, over the years several conventional and advanced breeding approaches were performed to improve salt tolerance in individual Brassica species, despite their differential critical levels of salt tolerance. Genetic interventions either by transgenics or through genome editing approaches were also exercised to incorporate/modify key regulatory genes viz. SOS, HKT, NHX and LEA gene families into different members of Brassicaceae in order to increase their salt tolerance potential. In this compilation, we focussed on gathering related information, which would help in better understanding of differential responses of different members of Brassicaceae family towards salt stress.