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Halophyte agriculture: success stories

journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-08, 20:15 authored by Suresh Panta, Tim Flowers, Peter Lane, Richard Doyle, Gabriel Haros, Sergey Shabala
The world's food production will need to increase by up to 70% by 2050 to match the predicted population growth. Achieving this goal will be challenging due to the decreased availability of arable land, resulting from urbanization and land degradation. Soil salinity is a major factor contributing to the latter process. While some improvement in crop yields in saline soils may be achieved as a consequence of single gene transfers, the real progress may be achieved only via a painfully slow “pyramiding” of essential physiological traits. Given the time constraints, a safer solution to meet the 2050 challenge may be to find alternative crop and forage species for farming in salt-affected conditions and to restore salt-affected areas. This review focuses on the suitability of halophytes to become important components of 21st century farming systems. We provide a comprehensive summary of the current use of halophytes for human food consumption, for forage and animal feeds, as oilseed and energy crops, and for desalination and phytoremediation purposes. We argue that the use of halophytes may be a viable commercial alternative to ease pressure on the requirement of good quality land and water for conventional cropping systems and the utilization of land degraded by salinity.

History

Publication status

  • Published

Journal

Environmental and Experimental Botany

ISSN

0098-8472

Publisher

Elsevier

Volume

107

Page range

71-83

Department affiliated with

  • Biology and Environmental Science Publications

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2015-03-06

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