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Salt Tolerance Mechanisms and Strategies for Enhancing Crop Productivity in Vegetable Crops: A Review

Singh N, Talwar D, Singh S, Verma J, B and Singh T

2025/04/09

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.15180111

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ABSTRACT

Salinity limits crop production, affecting over 1.4 billion hectares (10.7% of global land area) of the world's land. Factors like low rainfall, high evaporation, poor water management, and excessive fertilizer use contribute to soil salt accumulation. Salt tolerance, a complex trait influenced by multiple genes, reduces growth rates, alters leaf characteristics, and disrupts nutrient balance. However, salinity also has positive effects on quality and disease resistance. Understanding salt tolerance mechanisms is important for developing mitigation strategies. Genetic variations exist within and among species, with allopolyploid species and crops/varieties adapted to saline soils showing higher tolerance. Strategies for enhancing salt tolerance include developing halophytes, utilizing interspecific hybridization, using existing variation, and generating variation through selection, mutagenesis, or tissue culture. Grafting, selection, interspecific hybridization, tissue culture, and genetic engineering are approaches to developing salt-tolerant crops. Techniques like marker-assisted breeding and genetic transformation hold promise. Specific strategies for improving salt tolerance in selected vegetable crops (brinjal, carrot, pea, pepper, potato, okra, onion, tomato) involve treatments with methyl jasmonate, polyamines, inorganic nutrients, potassium, humic acid, inorganic fertilizers, plant growth regulators, grafting, and genetic approaches. Understanding the genetic, biochemical, and physiological mechanisms underlying salt tolerance is important for enhancing productivity under salinity.

AUTHOR AFFILIATIONS

1 Department of Vegetable Science, College of Horticulture and Forestry, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, Punjab, India- 141004
2 University of California Cooperative Extension, Modoc County, Alturas, CA 96101, USA
3 ICAR-IIMR, Ludhiana, Punjab, India

CITATION

Singh N, Talwar D, Singh S, Verma J, B and Singh T (2025) Salt Tolerance Mechanisms and Strategies for Enhancing Crop Productivity in Vegetable Crops: A Review. Environmental Science Archives 4(1): 202-224.

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