Review: Genomic tools and breeding tools to design salinity-smart food crops

Most food crops are relatively intolerant to soil salinity, yet globally soils are becoming increasingly salinized. This excellent review by Raza et al. pulls together the myriad approaches that are being used to develop salinity-smart crops. It starts with an overview of how soil salinity affects crops plants and some of the mechanisms that facilitate salinity tolerance. The rest of the review describes the ways that genomics-assisted breeding (GAB) tools including genome sequencing, QTL mapping, GWAS, GS, HBB, pan-genomics, single-cell/tissue genomics and phenotyping, epigenomics and transgenomics, are being used to complement conventional approaches to designing salinity-smart crop cultivars. It is a thorough and well-illustrated article that integrates a discussion of today’s powerful tools with a description of how they are being used to address a specific and important food security challenge. This integration of tools with applications makes this an excellent article to share with students. (Summary by Mary Williams @PlantTeaching.bsky.social) Plant Biotechnol. J. 10.1111/pbi.70104