Mechanisms and Strategies for Improving Salinity Tolerance in Fruit Crops Int.J.Curr.Microbiol

Fruit trees can be potentially exposed to numerous abiotic stresses during production and distribution. Among these, salinity is one of the most important abiotic stresses, limiting crop production mainly in arid and semi-arid regions, where soil salt content is naturally high and precipitation can be insufficient for leaching (Zhao et al., 2007). According to the FAO Land and Nutrition Management Service (2008), over 6% of the world’s land is affected by either salinity or sodicity. Fruit crops are generally sensitive to salinity and sodicity. However, some fruit crops like pomegranate, sapota, aonla, bael, jamun, karonda, tamarind and date palms are relatively tolerant to salinity. Multiple solutions are available for managing these soils and enhance the productivity of horticultural crops in these soils. There is a need for an increased understanding of the mechanisms of salt tolerance, the development of methods to comprehensively integrate and predict the effects of environmental factors on plant response throughout all stages of growth and development, and the development of improved methods to identify and manipulate genes and gene groups between species.