Background

Salinity is a major abiotic stress to global agriculture which hampers
crop growth and development, and eventually reduces yield. Transgenic
technology is an effective and efficient approach to improve crop salt
tolerance but depending on the availability of effective genes. We
previously isolated/Salt Tolerance5/(/ThST5/) from the
halophyte/Thellungiella halophila/, an ortholog of
Arabidopsis/SPT4-2/which encodes a transcription elongation factor.
However,/SPT4-2/-confered salt tolerance has not been evaluated in crops
yet. Here we report the evaluation of/ThST5/-conferred salt tolerance in
cotton (/Gossypium hirsutum/L.).


Results

The/ThST5/overexpression transgenic cotton plants displayed enhanced
tolerance to salt stress during seed germination and seedling stage
compared with wild type. Particularly, the transgenic plants showed
improved salinity tolerance as well as yield under saline field
conditions. Comparative transcriptomic analysis showed
that/ThST5/improved salt tolerance of transgenic cotton mainly by
maintaining ion homeostasis. In addition,/ThST5/also orchestrated the
expression of genes encoding antioxidants and salt-responsive
transcription factors.


Conclusion

Our results demonstrate that/ThST5/is a promising candidate to improve
salt tolerance in cotton.


Thellungiella halophila ST5 improves salt tolerance in cotton | Journal
of Cotton Research | Full Text (biomedcentral.com)
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