Transcriptional regulation-mediating ROS homeostasis and physio-biochemical changes in wild tomato () and cultivated tomato () under high salinity.

Salinity intrusion is one of the biggest problems in the context of sustainable agricultural practices. The major concern and challenge in developing salt-resistance in cultivated crops is the genetic complexity of the trait and lack of natural variability for stress-responsive traits. In this context, tomato wild relatives are important and have provided novel alleles for breeding abiotic stress tolerance including salt tolerance. We provide here a case study, involving tomato wild relative and cultivated variety , carried out under high salt stress to investigate comparative transcriptional regulation mediating ROS homeostasis and other physiological attributes. Salt dependent oxidative stress in was characterized by a relatively higher HO content, generation of O , electrolytic leakage and lipid peroxidation whereas reduced content of both ascorbate and glutathione. On the contrary, the robust anti-oxidative system in the particularly counteracted the salt-induced oxidative damages by a higher fold change in expression profile of defense-related salt-responsive genes along with the increased activities of anti-oxidative enzymes. We conclude that harbours novel genes or alleles for salt stress-related traits that could be identified, characterized, and mapped for its possible introgression into cultivated tomato lines.