Salt Stress Responses and Tolerance in Wheat

Abstract

Wheat is produced in 17% of cultivated land throughout the world. It is a most widely grown cereal crop and has more calories and protein than any other crop. Approximately 35% of the world population uses it as staple food. Salt stress is one of the principal limitations in wheat production. The agricultural production in many countries is severely impaired because the world’s total 6% land area, i.e., about 800 million hectares, is contaminated by salt. Many physiological as well as biochemical mechanisms have been developed in plants to survive at high salt concentration. The most effective as well as economical approach to solve the salt problem is to improve wheat adaptation under salt stress and enhance its grain yield particularly in those countries which produce wheat with less resources and facing problem of salt in soil. Various approaches like morphological and physiological testings and genetic and molecular strategies are required to understand the genetic as well as physiological mechanisms of natural differences in salt tolerance of wheat and to obtain methods to investigate the inherent genetic differences, to get new candidate genes for improving salt tolerance in wheat.