The Sustainable Use of Halophytes in Salt-Affected Land: State-of-the-Art and Next Steps in a Saltier World.

Salinization is a major cause of soil degradation that affects several million hectares of agricultural land, threatening food security and the sustainability of agricultural systems worldwide. Nevertheless, despite the negative impact of salinity, salt-affected land also provides several important ecosystem services, from providing habitats and nurseries for numerous species to sustainable food production. This opinion paper, written in the framework of the EU COST Action CA22144 SUSTAIN on the sustainable use of salt-affected land, therefore, focuses on the potential of halophytes and saline agriculture to transform and restore key functions of these salt-affected and marginal lands.

Sugar beet PMT5a and STP13 carriers suitable for proton-driven plasma membrane sucrose and glucose import in taproots.

Sugar beet (Beta vulgaris) is the major sugar-producing crop in Europe and Northern America, as the taproot stores sucrose at a concentration of around 20%. Genome sequence analysis together with biochemical and electrophysiological approaches led to the identification and characterization of the TST sucrose transporter driving vacuolar sugar accumulation in the taproot. However, the sugar transporters mediating sucrose uptake across the plasma membrane of taproot parenchyma cells remained unknown.

Can microplastics threaten plant productivity and fruit quality? Insights from Micro-Tom and Micro-PET/PVC.

Solanum lycopersicum L., a crop grown worldwide with a high nutritional value for the human diet, was used to test the impact of microplastics on plant growth, productivity, and fruit quality. Two of the most represented microplastics in soils, polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC), were tested.

Stalk cell polar ion transport provide for bladder-based salinity tolerance in Chenopodium quinoa.

Chenopodium quinoa uses epidermal bladder cells (EBCs) to sequester excess salt. Each EBC complex consists of a leaf epidermal cell, a stalk cell, and the bladder. Under salt stress, sodium (Na ), chloride (Cl ), potassium (K ) and various metabolites are shuttled from the leaf lamina to the bladders.

Plant responses to heterogeneous salinity: agronomic relevance and research priorities.

Background: Soil salinity, in both natural and managed environments, is highly heterogeneous, and understanding how plants respond to this spatiotemporal heterogeneity is increasingly important for sustainable agriculture in the era of global climate change. While the vast majority of research on crop response to salinity utilizes homogeneous saline conditions, a much smaller, but important, effort has been made in the past decade to understand plant molecular and physiological responses to heterogeneous salinity mainly by using split-root studies. These studies have begun to unravel how plants compensate for water/nutrient deprivation and limit salt stress by optimizing root-foraging in the most favourable parts of the soil.