Plants adapted to challenging environments offer fascinating models of evolutionary change. Importantly,they also give information to meet our pressing need to develop resilient, low-input crops.With mounting environm...Plants adapted to challenging environments offer fascinating models of evolutionary change. Importantly,they also give information to meet our pressing need to develop resilient, low-input crops.With mounting environmental fluctuation—including temperature, rainfall, and soil salinity and degradation—this is more urgent than ever. Happily, solutions are hiding in plain sight: the adaptive mechanismsfrom natural adapted populations, once understood, can then be leveraged. Much recent insighthas come from the study of salinity, a widespread factor limiting productivity, with estimates of 20% ofall cultivated lands affected. This is an expanding problem, given increasing climate volatility, rising sealevels, and poor irrigation practices. We therefore highlight recent benchmark studies of ecologicallyadaptive salt tolerance in plants, assessing macro- and microevolutionary mechanisms, and therecently recognized role of ploidy and the microbiome on salinity adaptation. We synthesize insightspecifically on naturally evolved adaptive salt-tolerance mechanisms, as these works move substantiallybeyond traditional mutant or knockout studies, to show how evolution can nimbly ‘‘tweak’’ plantphysiology to optimize function. We then point to future directions to advance this field that intersectevolutionary biology, abiotic-stress tolerance, breeding, and molecular plant physiology.展开更多
基金support of a Leverhulme Trust Research Project Grant(RPG-2020-367).
文摘Plants adapted to challenging environments offer fascinating models of evolutionary change. Importantly,they also give information to meet our pressing need to develop resilient, low-input crops.With mounting environmental fluctuation—including temperature, rainfall, and soil salinity and degradation—this is more urgent than ever. Happily, solutions are hiding in plain sight: the adaptive mechanismsfrom natural adapted populations, once understood, can then be leveraged. Much recent insighthas come from the study of salinity, a widespread factor limiting productivity, with estimates of 20% ofall cultivated lands affected. This is an expanding problem, given increasing climate volatility, rising sealevels, and poor irrigation practices. We therefore highlight recent benchmark studies of ecologicallyadaptive salt tolerance in plants, assessing macro- and microevolutionary mechanisms, and therecently recognized role of ploidy and the microbiome on salinity adaptation. We synthesize insightspecifically on naturally evolved adaptive salt-tolerance mechanisms, as these works move substantiallybeyond traditional mutant or knockout studies, to show how evolution can nimbly ‘‘tweak’’ plantphysiology to optimize function. We then point to future directions to advance this field that intersectevolutionary biology, abiotic-stress tolerance, breeding, and molecular plant physiology.
