Halophytes-Miracle Plants to Survive in Extreme Saline Environment

Halophytes are the plants which have capacity to survive in the highly salt affected soils. This ability against high salt is mainly because of two mechanisms – salt tolerance and salt avoidance. The mechanism of salt tolerance includes adaptations such as shedding, secretion and succulence whereas salt avoidance composed of excretion of Na+, reduction of Na+ influx and compartmentalization. Along with these mechanisms, salt tolerance or avoidance may be linked with various metabolic processes such as ROS generation and detoxification pathways, signal transduction, osmoregulation or ion homeostasis through osmoprotectants and differential expression of salt-responsive genes and transcription factors. Therefore, the elucidation of such metabolic pathways linked with salt tolerance and identification of salt-responsive genes or promoters from various halophytes may be studied for the genetic engineering of crop plants for salt tolerance using various molecular or advanced breeding techniques.