Maintenance of stress related transcripts in tolerant cultivar at a level higher than sensitive one appears to be a conserved salinity response among plants

Response of plants towards salinity is multigenic in nature with its various components playing diverse roles in stress perception, relay or response. For the purpose of dissecting the genetic determinants of salinity response in crops, the family Brassicaceae presents an excellent model since significant inter-and intra-specific variations have been reported for salinity tolerance. Using these intraspecific variations of Brassica, we show that one of the possible mechanism by which a genotype is able to exhibit tolerance better than another is by keeping the basal levels of stress responsive transcripts higher than the sensitive genotype. This is quite reflected when we analyze members of a specific pathway such as SOS pathway or even when we extend the analysis to a range of molecules including those playing important role in stress perception, signal transduction or stress response. However, these investigations need to be extended to genome level transcript analysis to further validate the hypothesis of "well preparedness" in tolerant genotypes and we propose the suitability of Brassica genotypes for this endevours.