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Use of Salt-Tolerant Plants and Halophytes as Potential Crops in Saline Soils in China
Introduction
As one of the major abiotic
stresses, salinity severely inhibits plant growth and development, leads to
crop yield loss and plant ecosystem deterioration worldwide [1,2]. Sodium
chloride is considered to be the most component that causing salinization and
is the widespread salt that existing in saline soils [3]. UP to now, almost 10%
of the land area and 50% of the irrigated soils area was affected by salinity
presence [1,4]. In addition, the degree of soil salinization is still
intensified due to natural and human factors such as irrational irrigation.
Simultaneously, the agricultural land has declined due to the
industrialization, the urban development, and the habitat need with the rapid
increase of population [5]. Therefore, developing strategies to make use of
saline land will be crucial for addressing the problem of insufficient farmland
and meeting the challenge of providing food security for the projected global
population of 9.3 billion people by 2050. It is considered as a desirable and
sustainable strategy to plant the salt-tolerant crop varieties and halophytes
for the agricultural usage of saline soils.
In general, the growth and the
reproduction of crops were severely inhibited when they grow in saline
environments [6], even died in heavily saline soils. 99.13 million hectares of
saline-alkali land are present in China, accounting for about 12% of the world’s
saline-alkali land, and more than 20 million hectares of land are considered to
be saline, among which 20% are distributed in cultivated lands [7]. Many works
have been done in getting a better and more efficient way to use of the
salinized land by biological methods in China. In the present paper, applied
and potential plants that could grow on saline land and with economic and
application value will be discussed, which will provide an insight
understanding and application reference for improving and using the saline
soils for agriculture.
Discussion
There are about 420 halophyte
species and more than 1000 salt-tolerant plants in China. In the current, a
wide range of applications could be implemented according to the salt-tolerant
plants and halophytes. Up to now, more than 100 species of the salt-tolerant
plants and halophytes have been applied for improving saline lands in China.
They could be used as food, such as the salt-tolerant wheat (Dekang 961,
Shanrong 3), quiona, and sorghum; vegetables, such as Suaeda salsa, Salicornia
bigelovii, and Ice plant (Mesembryanthemum crystalinum L.); forage, such as
Atriplex triangularis, sweet sorghum, and wild soybean (Glycine soja Sieb. et
Zucc.); fruits, such as winter jujube (Ziziphus jujuba cv. Dongzao), and
Nitraria tangutorum; medicine, such as Glycyrrhiza uralensis Fisch, Apocynum
venetum, and flower plant such as Limonium sinense. And bioenergy is considered
as a renewable new energy.
With the rapid economy
expansion, the demand for energy is sustaining insatiable. Bioenergy such as
ethanol is selected as a new alternative energy source to meet the global
requirement. In addition, to avoid the completion of food and farmland for
people in China, the bioenergy is allowed to produce only in marginal soils
such as saline soils by culturing the energy crops with higher salt-tolerant
ability such as sweet sorghum, hybrid pennisetum, Manihot esculenta, and sugar
beet [8,9,10]. Sweet sorghum with high salt tolerance, photosynthesis, high
biomass and sugar content in the stem is widely planted in saline soil to be a
suitable crop to produce the food, the animal feed, good liquor-making raw
materials and bioethanol [11,12].
Halophytes could grow under
extreme salt conditions with highly salt-tolerant ability, evenly at sea salt
level [13]. As the precious plant resources with high applicable value,
halophytes have been obtained more and more attentions by scientists [14]. For
instance, to remediate the saline soils by culturing halophytes, preventing
salt back to the soil surface, and removing salt from the soils that reducing
salt content [5]. In addition, halophytes also have many economic values, for
example, some of them could be used as vegetables, fodder and fruit [15,16].
Even some of the halophytic vegetables such as Suaeda salsa could be irrigated
using seawater or grown in the intertidal zone [17]. It could be providing
gourmet vegetables using seawater and meet the shortage of freshwater resources
in the world [18]. Furthermore, halophytes have other usage, Suaeda salsa could
be used to produce oil due to the abounded content of unsaturated fatty acid in
their seeds [19,20]. Halophytes could provide abounded salt-tolerant genes for
studying the salt tolerance mechanism and obtain the genetically modified salt-tolerant
crops. Perhaps, the problem of “less land for more population” in the
developing countries could be solved by planting salt-tolerant plants and
halophyte on the saline soils and provide economic benefit and could meet the
problem of the restricted agricultural land resources [21,22].
Conclusion
With
the increasing of the saline areas and the degrading of the arable soils in the
world, we face the problem of how to balance the reducing of farmland and the
increasing of the requirement of food and energy. The growth, development and
reproduction of all crops are severely inhibited by saline soils. While some of
the salt-tolerant plants can grow in the saline conditions, which could utilize
the saline soils by culturing salt-tolerant plants and provide us food,
vegetables, fruits, animal forage, flowers and bioenergy. This will solve the
contradiction between the increase in population and the decrease in cultivated
land area, and at the same time, provide a better method to develop and utilize
of saline land. Therefore, screening more salt-tolerant plant and halophytes
with high potential value in agriculture is an urgent task.
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