Soil salinity is claiming about three hectares of arable land from conventional crop farming every minute. At the same time, the challenge of feeding 9.3 billion people by 2050 is forcing agricultural production into marginal areas, and providing sufficient food for this growing population cannot be achieved without a major breakthrough in crop breeding for salinity tolerance. In this Opinion article, we argue that the current trend of targeting Na+ exclusion mechanisms in breeding programmes for salinity tolerance in crops needs revising. We propose that progress in this area will be achieved by learning from halophytes, naturally salt-loving plants capable of surviving in harsh saline environments, by targeting the mechanisms conferring Na+ sequestration in external storage organs.

Item Type:	Refereed Article
Research Division:	Biological Sciences
Research Group:	Plant biology
Research Field:	Plant physiology
Objective Division:	Plant Production and Plant Primary Products
Objective Group:	Other plant production and plant primary products
Objective Field:	Other plant production and plant primary products not elsewhere classified
UTAS Author:	Shabala, SN (Professor Sergey Shabala)
UTAS Author:	Bose, J (Dr Jayakumar Bose)
ID Code:	98155
Year Published:	2014
Web of Science® Times Cited:	189
Deposited By:	Tasmanian Institute of Agriculture
Deposited On:	2015-02-03
Last Modified:	2017-11-02
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