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Special Issue "Drought and Salinity Tolerance in Crops for Sustainable Agriculture"

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A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Agriculture".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 January 2022.

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Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Zhong-Hua Chen
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

School of Science, Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, Western Sydney University, Penrith, New South Wales 2751, Australia
Interests: agricultural science; greenhouse horticulture; plant stress biology; evolutionary biology

Prof. Dr. Wenying Zhang
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

Research Center of Crop Stresses Resistance Technologies, Yangtze University, Jingzhou 434025, China
Interests: environmental (abiotic) stress tolerance in plants

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Fanrong Zeng
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

Institute of Crop Science, College of Agriculture and Biotechnology, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China
Interests: physiological and molecular mechanisms in plant adaptive response to abiotic stresses; cell signals for lodicules swelling-to-wilting during floret opening-to-closing in Gramineae crops; absorption, transport, accumulation and metabolism of toxic pollutants (heavy metals, persistent organic pollutants, etc.) in crops; crop nutrients utilization efficiency

Prof. Dr. Fenglin Deng
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

Collaborative Innovation Centre for Grain Industry, College of Agriculture, Yangtze University, Jingzhou 434025, China
Interests: ion transport; gene regulation

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The rapid population growth needs be accompanied by a massive increase in sustainable food production. However, global crop productivity is remarkably impaired by drought and soil salinity. It is estimated that 45% of agricultural lands are subject to continuous or frequent drought conditions. Additionally, approximately 4.03 billion people living in 13 countries are seriously affected by soil salinity, which represents 52% of the world’s population. Therefore, there is an urgent need to generate high-yielding plants that use water more efficiently with moderate-to-high salt tolerance. Although comprehensive achievements including salt and drought stress sensing and signaling pathways, ion transport and homeostasis, hormonal and gene expression regulation, metabolic changes, as well as physiological responses in Arabidopsis and some key crop species have been obtained, our understanding of the drought and salinity tolerance of some crops—especially vegetables and cash crops—are limited. Thus, the target crop species of this Special Issue can be broad acre crops, horticultural crops, as well as cash crops.

This Special Issue of Sustainability provides a platform for researchers to publish high-quality original research papers and reviews that focus on the physiological, molecular, and genetic basis of plants’ response to salt and/or drought stress, as well as strategies for improving stress tolerance. Submissions on related topic areas such as plant systematics, comparative genomics, molecular biology, physiology, and ecology, as well as sustainable agricultural practices and engineering and technological approaches to mitigate drought and/or salinity stress in crops are all encouraged to consider this Special Issue. This Special Issue will fill some important knowledge gaps in the mechanisms underlying drought and soil salinity tolerance in some crops. It will also shed light on the future sustainability of agriculture and horticulture by addressing these two major issues.

Prof. Dr. Zhong-Hua Chen
Prof. Dr. Wenying Zhang
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Fanrong Zeng
Prof. Dr. Fenglin Deng
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1900 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

Salt stress
Drought
Crop management
Crop physiology
Regulatory network
Gene family evolution
Mitigation strategies
Sustainable food production

Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

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Open AccessArticle

Changes in Reserve Mobilization Caused by Salinity Could Interfere in the Initial Growth of Jatropha curcas

and

Sustainability 2021, 13(13), 7446; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13137446 - 02 Jul 2021

Viewed by 316

Abstract

Salinity in soil can affect Jatropha seedling metabolism, interfering with plant establishment. In this study, the effect of salinity on the mobilization of reserves during the development of Jatropha seedlings was tested. Two genotypes of Jatropha were used and three concentrations of NaCl were applied between the 4th and 8th days after germination. The effects of salinity on seedling growth, in terms of fresh and dry phytomass, ionic partition, and sugar quantification, starch, proteins, amino acids, and lipids were evaluated in cotyledon leaves, hypocotyls, and roots. There was an increase in the content of all classes of macromolecules analyzed in at least one of the organs. It is hypothesized that the hypocotyls acted as an accumulating organ of Na⁺. The accumulations of amino acids and protein in roots suggest that metabolic responses occurred in response to the ionic and osmotic effects of NaCl, although this accumulation did not appear to prevent biomass losses in seedlings. Furthermore, the findings of this study demonstrate that salinity inhibits the mobilization of lipids and carbon stocks from cotyledon leaves to the rest of the plant, and together with the synthesis of proteins and amino acids that occurred primarily in roots, contributed to response of these plants to salinity. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Drought and Salinity Tolerance in Crops for Sustainable Agriculture)

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Open AccessArticle

Post-Anthesis Mobilization of Stem Assimilates in Wheat under Induced Stress

Mian Faisal Nazir

Zareen Sarfraz

Naimatullah Mangi

Muhammad Kausar Nawaz Shah

Talat Mahmood

Tahir Mahmood

Muhammad Shahid Iqbal

Muhammad Ishaq Asif Rehmani

Mohamed El-Sharnouby

Mohamed Khamees Aly Shabaan

Sobhy Gharib Rizk Sorour

and

Ayman EL Sabagh

Sustainability 2021, 13(11), 5940; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13115940 - 25 May 2021

Viewed by 504

Abstract

Stem reserves in grain crops are considered important in grain filling under post-anthesis stress in the absence/low availability of photosynthetic assimilates. Considerable variation is present among genotypes for stem reserve translocation in wheat. Therefore, this study aimed to exploit the phenotypic variation for stem reserve translocation in wheat under control and chemically induced stress conditions. The phenotypic variation among six parents and their corresponding direct cross combinations was evaluated under induced stress conditions. The results signify the presence of considerable variation between treatments, genotypes, and treatment-genotype interactions. The parent LLR-20 depicted the highest translocation of dry matter and contribution of post-anthesis assimilates under induced-stress conditions. Similarly, cross combinations Nacozari × LLR22, Nacozari × LLR 20, Nacozari × Parula, Nacozari × LLR 21, LLR 22 × LLR 21, and LLR 20 × LLR 21 showed higher source-sink accumulation under induced-stress conditions. The selected parents and cross combinations can be further utilized in the breeding program to strengthen the genetic basis for stress tolerance in wheat. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Drought and Salinity Tolerance in Crops for Sustainable Agriculture)

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Open AccessArticle

Physio-Morphological and Biochemical Trait-Based Evaluation of Ethiopian and Chinese Wheat Germplasm for Drought Tolerance at the Seedling Stage

Gizie Abeje Belay

Zhengbin Zhang

and

Ping Xu

Sustainability 2021, 13(9), 4605; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13094605 - 21 Apr 2021

Viewed by 594

Abstract

For Ethiopia’s wheat production, drought is a major natural disaster. Exploration of drought-resistant varieties from a bulk of wheat germplasm conserved in the gene bank is of paramount importance for breeding climate change-resilient modern cultivars. The present study was aimed at identifying the best performing drought-resistant genotypes under non-stress and polyethylene glycol simulated (PEG) stress conditions in a growth chamber. Forty diverse Ethiopian bread and durum wheat cultivars along with three Chinese bread wheat cultivars possessing strong drought resistance and susceptibility were evaluated. After acclimation with the natural environment, the seedlings were imposed to severe drought stress (20% PEG₆₀₀₀), and 15 seedling traits including photosynthetic and free proline were investigated. Our findings indicated that drought stress caused a profound decline in plant water consumption (83.0%), shoot fresh weight (64.9%), stomatal conductance (61.6%), root dry weight (55.2%), and other investigated traits except root to shoot length ratio and proline content which showed a significant increase under drought stress. A significant and positive correlation was found between photosynthetic pigments in both growth conditions. Proline exhibited a negative correlation with most of the investigated traits except root to shoot length ratio and all photosynthetic pigments which showed a positive and non-significant association. Our result also showed a wide range of genetic variation (CV) ranging from 3.23% to 47.3%; the highest in shoot dry weight (SDW) (47.3%) followed by proline content (44.63%) and root dry weight (36.03%). Based on multivariate principal component biplot analysis and average sum of ranks (ASR), G12, G16 and G25 were identified as the best drought tolerant and G6, G42, G4, G11, and G9 as bottom five sensitive. The potential of these genotypes offers further investigation at a molecular and cellular level to identify the novel gene associated with the stress response. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Drought and Salinity Tolerance in Crops for Sustainable Agriculture)

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Review

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Open AccessReview

Tailoring Next Generation Plant Growth Promoting Microorganisms as Versatile Tools beyond Soil Desalinization: A Road Map towards Field Application

Justyna Anna Nowakowska

Tomasz Oszako

and

Lassaad Belbahri

Sustainability 2021, 13(8), 4422; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13084422 - 15 Apr 2021

Viewed by 505

Abstract

Plant growth promoting bacteria (PGPB) have been the target of intensive research studies toward their efficient use in the field as biofertilizers, biocontrol, and bioremediation agents among numerous other applications. Recent trends in the field of PGPB research led to the development of versatile multifaceted PGPB that can be used in different field conditions such as biocontrol of plant pathogens in metal contaminated soils. Unfortunately, all these research efforts lead to the development of PGPB that failed to perform in salty environments. Therefore, it is urgently needed to address this drawback of these PGPB toward their efficient performance in salinity context. In this paper we provide a review of state-of-the-art research in the field of PGPB and propose a road map for the development of next generation versatile and multifaceted PGPB that can perform in salinity. Beyond soil desalinization, our study paves the way towards the development of PGPB able to provide services in diverse salty environments such as heavy metal contaminated, or pathogen threatened. Smart development of salinity adapted next generation biofertilizers will inevitably allow for mitigation and alleviation of biotic and abiotic threats to plant productivity in salty environments. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Drought and Salinity Tolerance in Crops for Sustainable Agriculture)

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Open AccessReview

ROS Homeostasis and Plant Salt Tolerance: Plant Nanobiotechnology Updates

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Sustainability 2021, 13(6), 3552; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13063552 - 23 Mar 2021

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 615

Abstract

Salinity is an issue impairing crop production across the globe. Under salinity stress, besides the osmotic stress and Na⁺ toxicity, ROS (reactive oxygen species) overaccumulation is a secondary stress which further impairs plant performance. Chloroplasts, mitochondria, the apoplast, and peroxisomes are the main ROS generation sites in salt-stressed plants. In this review, we summarize ROS generation, enzymatic and non-enzymatic antioxidant systems in salt-stressed plants, and the potential for plant biotechnology to maintain ROS homeostasis. Overall, this review summarizes the current understanding of ROS homeostasis of salt-stressed plants and highlights potential applications of plant nanobiotechnology to enhance plant tolerance to stresses. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Drought and Salinity Tolerance in Crops for Sustainable Agriculture)

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