Salt in Plants???

 By: Brisa C. Guerra

Effectiveness in soil microbial communities in easing plant salt stress. (Li, H., La, S., Zhang, X, et al., 2021)

When thinking of nature and salt we would assume the ocean or seawater where the particles of salt can easily be tasted, but in soil many of us would not think it be present there at all. As we all must know, soil carries many types of minerals and bacteria, but salt or levels of salinity is one of the main abiotic stressors that affect plants in specificity to crops. If not treated, the salinity levels can then cause many other problems such as many other stresses, nutritional disorders, and organ aging in plants. It was resulted that those plants who are salt resistant (SR) thrived better than those salt sensitive (SS) plants. It was shown that even though one type of plant had better production of growth, root-derived bacteria (RDB) did help the plant in positive ways by adapting to salinity. Despite being a plant being sensitive or being resistant to saline, the RDB adapted the plants well enough to promote growth and overcome the challenge. This is important because humans rely on agriculture through our daily lives mainly through what we eat. Based on what was found within this experiment, the next step could be finding a way to manage salinity on a bigger scale such as field crop productions. Overall, crops are a necessity for humans and without managing the salt levels on the fields, it can eventually affect production as a whole.

Citation:

Li, H., La, S., Zhang, X. et al. (2021) Salt-induced recruitment of specific root-associated bacterial consortium capable of enhancing plant adaptability to salt stress. ISME J 15, 2865-2882