Salt tolerance in cereals: Molecular mechanisms and applications

Major abiotic stress that limits plant growth and agriculture productivity is the soil salinity. In order to minimize the detrimental effects of salinity, highly complex salt-responsive signaling and metabolic processes at the cellular, organ, and whole-plant levels have been evolved in the plants. Currently, it has become the need of the hour to understand the molecular basis of salt stress signaling and tolerance mechanisms in cereals for engineering and/or screening for more tolerance to salt stress. Valuable information will be provided through investigation of the physiological and molecular mechanisms of salt tolerance for effective engineering strategies. Current advancement in proteomics has helped us in studying the sophisticated molecular networks in plants. Reports of proteomics studies about plant salt response and tolerance mechanisms, especially that of cereals, have revealed the mechanisms that include changes in photosynthesis, scavenging system of reactive oxygen species (ROS), ion homeostasis, osmotic homeostasis, membrane transport, signaling transduction, transcription, protein synthesis/turnover, cytoskeleton dynamics, and cross talks with other stresses.