Keni Cota-Ruiz
Published: 2024-09-13
Total Pages: 169
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Feeding the growing world population will require a significant increase in agricultural production. However, food overproduction needs to be achieved while crops and plants face salinized soils, water deficits, lesser arable lands, drought, and climate change, among other factors. Salinity impairs plant functioning at multiple levels. For instance, excess salt contents cause higher osmotic pressures, nutritional disorders, seed germination inhibition, and growth suppression. Plants respond to this aggression by activating several metabolic pathways, including but not limited to regulating hormone-dependent processes, repressing growth-related genes, and eliciting the antioxidant response system. Worldwide, lands under irrigation practices are experiencing higher salt content, impacting plant performance and causing significant drops in yields. Therefore, understanding how cultivars and plants respond to adverse environments such as salt excess in soils, as well as investigating novel approaches to boost stressed-plant physiological performance, are vital components that need to be addressed if we are to achieve food security. Multiple genes involved in the ABA signaling pathways are known to respond and start plant adaptive responses when facing salt stress. In addition, several transcription factors, such as the phytochromes and zinc finger proteins, play roles in regulating the morphological responses of plants under stress. Antioxidant enzymes are also upregulated in response to higher content of salt. Recently, nanobiotechnological approaches aimed at delivering cargoes such as micronutrients or chemicals in a cell-specific manner are a promising alternative to aid plants in combating stress. Similarly, using nanofertilizers shows favorable effects in plants under hostile environments. CRISPR-CAS is an emerging, powerful, and feasible tool to modify genes and be applied to plants to make them more tolerant to salt in excess.