JXB Advance Access originally published online on March 6, 2006
Journal of Experimental Botany 2006 57(5):1045-1058; doi:10.1093/jxb/erj102
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
RESEARCH PAPER |
Increasing salt tolerance in the tomato
1Estacion Experimental La Mayora, CSIC, E-29750 Algarrobo-Costa, Málaga, Spain
2CEBAS, CSIC, Campus de Espinardo, E-30100 Espinardo, Murcia, Spain
3IVIA, Carretera Moncada-Náquera, km 4.5, Apartado Oficial, E-46113 Moncada, Valencia, Spain
4Instituto de Biología Molecular y Celular de Plantas, UPV-CSIC, Camino de Vera s/n, E-46022 Valencia, Spain
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: cuartero{at}eelm.csic.es
In this paper, a number of strategies to overcome the deleterious effects of salinity on plants will be reviewed; these strategies include using molecular markers and genetic transformation as tools to develop salinity-tolerant genotypes, and some cultural techniques. For more than 12 years, QTL analysis has been attempted in order to understand the genetics of salt tolerance and to deal with component traits in breeding programmes. Despite innovations like better marker systems and improved genetic mapping strategies, the success of marker-assisted selection has been very limited because, in part, of inadequate experimental design. Since salinity is variable in time and space, experimental design must allow the study of genotypexenvironment interaction. Genetic transformation could become a powerful tool in plant breeding, but the growing knowledge from plant physiology must be integrated with molecular breeding techniques. It has been shown that the expression of several transgenes promotes a higher level of salt tolerance in some species. Despite this promising result, the development of a salt-tolerant cultivar by way of transgenesis has still not been achieved. Future directions in order to overcome the present limitations are proposed. Three cultural techniques have proved useful in tomato to overcome, in part, the effects of salinity: treatment of seedlings with drought or NaCl ameliorates the adaptation of adult plants to salinity; mist applied to tomato plants grown in Mediterranean conditions improves vegetative growth and yield in saline conditions; and grafting tomato cultivars onto appropriate rootstocks could reduce the effects of salinity.
Key words: Conditioning, grafting, misting, pretreatments of salt and drought, quantitative trait loci, transgenic plants
CiteULike 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us What's this?
This article has been cited by other articles:
|
|
 |
|
  J. Onofre-Lemus, I. Hernandez-Lucas, L. Girard, and J. Caballero-Mellado ACC (1-Aminocyclopropane-1-Carboxylate) Deaminase Activity, a Widespread Trait in Burkholderia Species, and Its Growth-Promoting Effect on Tomato Plants Appl. Envir. Microbiol., October 15, 2009; 75(20): 6581 - 6590. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 I. Teolis, W. Liu, and E. B. Peffley Salinity Effects on Seed Germination and Plant Growth of Guar Crop Sci., March 17, 2009; 49(2): 637 - 642. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 B. Ouyang, T. Yang, H. Li, L. Zhang, Y. Zhang, J. Zhang, Z. Fei, and Z. Ye Identification of early salt stress response genes in tomato root by suppression subtractive hybridization and microarray analysis J. Exp. Bot., February 1, 2007; 58(3): 507 - 520. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|