Engineering of a novel gene from a halophyte: Potential for agriculture in degraded coastal saline soil

Abstract

AbstractTo feed the ever increasing world population, more crops production per hectare has become a necessity. Soil salinity is one of the important factors causing land degradation leading to low soil aeration and water conductance. It adversely impacts plant growth and development. Adaption through modern molecular tools is an important strategy for alternative use for degraded land. To achieve this aim, we have cloned a novel salt responsive gene Salicornia brachiata RNA Poly III Complex 5 Like subunit (SbRPC5L) from an extreme halophyte and transformed it into tobacco for abiotic stress tolerance. The gene is intronless, 1,202 bp long, membrane‐localized, encoding a protein of 196 amino acids and shows upregulation under salt and osmotic stress. Tobacco plants harboring SbRPC5L perform better under stress and have more water content, membrane stability, and stress tolerance indices as compared with control plants. The transgenics exhibited lower electrolyte leakage, malondialdehyde, reactive oxygen species (ROS), H2O2, and Na+, more negative value of osmotic potential, higher K+ content, and K+/Na+ ratio. Some of the important antioxidant genes, namely, NtAPX, NtPOX, and NtSOD, get upregulated in transgenic lines. The results suggest that this novel gene has a potential to be used as a promising alternative to impart abiotic stress tolerance for climate resilient agriculture in degraded costal saline areas.