Halophytic Genes to Edit Glycophyte’s Genome for Salinity Tolerance

Agricultural soil salinity poses a significant threat to global crop productivity, contributing to ongoing land degradation. Conventional food crops (glycophytes) display limited tolerance to high-salinity levels, while halophytes, naturally adapted to high saline environments, harbor a wealth of genes responsible for salinity tolerance. Leveraging these genes through techniques such as plant breeding, genetic engineering, and genome editing holds promise for transforming conventional crop plants. However, traditional plant breeding is labor-intensive and inefficient. Introduction of genes from other salt-tolerant species (halophytes) through genetic engineering has gained prominence due to its reliability, long-term efficacy, and potential cost savings while maintaining environmental sustainability, but it also faces commercial acceptance challenges in many crops due to concerns about transgenics and GMOs. The emergence of genome editing, facilitating tools such as zinc finger nuclease (ZFN), transcription activator-like effector nuclease (TALEN), and clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR), offers a more optimistic avenue for enhancing the salt tolerance of glycophytes. This cutting-edge biotechnological approach opens up new prospects for further improving the salinity tolerance capacity of conventional crops which has been widely discussed in this chapter.