Marker assisted selection and crop management for salt tolerance: A review

Abstract

Salinity is one of the major abiotic constraints for crop management in irrigated as well as rainfed areas and results to poor harvests. The yield reduction in salt affected soils can be overcome by soil reclamation or by improving salt tolerance in crops. The saline soils can be reclaimed by leaching the salt and cultivation of salt tolerance crops. Rice is known as a good reclamation crop. Salt tolerance is a complex polygenic trait. Insufficient knowledge about mechanism of its inheritance results to slow progress in its introgression into target crops. The role of traditional as well as marker assisted breeding approaches has been discussed for introgression of salt tolerance in crops in order to obtain better harvests.

Key word: Abiotic constraints, salinity, crop management, introgression, traditional breeding, marker assisted selection.