Open Access

REVIEW

Salt Stress Threshold in Millets: Perspective on Cultivation on Marginal Lands for Biomass

by Naveed Ul Mushtaq¹, Seerat Saleem¹, Aadil Rasool¹, Wasifa Hafiz Shah¹, Khalid Rehman Hakeem^2,*, Reiaz Ul Rehman^1,*

1 Department of Bioresources, School of Biological Sciences, University of Kashmir, Srinagar, 190006, India
2 Department of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, 21589, Saudi Arabia

* Corresponding Authors: Khalid Rehman Hakeem. Email: ; Reiaz Ul Rehman. Email:

Phyton-International Journal of Experimental Botany 2021, 90(1), 51-64. https://doi.org/10.32604/phyton.2020.012163

Received 17 June 2020; Accepted 12 August 2020; Issue published 20 November 2020

Abstract

Millets hold an immense assurance for food safety and nourishment amid ever-rising agricultural expenses and climate alterations. They are healthful, have supplementary wellbeing profit and need remarkably fewer effort overheads for crop growing. These characters draw attention to millets as a plant of preference for the humankind in the course of emergent alarm about environmental changes. Millets have the prospect to provide biomass and thus bioenergy, reduced carbon emission, carbon footprint and sustainable modern agriculture. As the rate of expansion in budding countries is increasing day by day, the scarcity of energy is a big panic and there is a mounting turn in the direction and rehearsal of waste and biomass as an energy source. Globally, at least 20% of total irrigated land has been injured by salt and 1.5 million hectares is taken away of cultivation every year. Thus, in future, we will have a requirement of efficient crops and utilisation of marginal lands for agriculture. Millet is an answer to the efficient crop. Plants are subjected to various environmental pressures (high/low temperature, heavy metal, salinity, pesticides, etc.) as well as biotic stresses (virus, bacteria, fungi, etc.) and millets are not an exception to it. Millets are categorised as glycophytes and can tolerate average salt threshold of about 6 (EC_e) (dS/m) with some variation from specie to specie. Increase in the salt concentrations can lead to retarded growth and development, thus need for mitigants arise to reduce such stresses. Some mitigants to overcome the stress levels include proline, polyamine and betaines, Na₂SeO₃, H₂S, KNO₃, Mg(NO₃)₂, etc.

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