Consequences of Salinity Stress on the Quality of Crops and Its Mitigation Strategies for Sustainable Crop Production: An Outlook of Arid and Semi-arid Regions

Abstract

One of the key tasks of the Sustainable Development Goals connected to Agriculture, Safety and nutritional quality of food is to raise crop production per unit area without compromising the sustainability of agricultural resources and environmental security. Along with environmental constraints, soil salinization has become one of the major threats that restricts agricultural potential and is closely related to mishandling of agricultural resources and overexploitation of water resources, particularly in arid regions. The effect of salinity on the quality of various agricultural crops has not yet been much explored. Presently, this information is very important due to the increasing use of saline water for irrigation worldwide which has given rise to as soil salinity has become a critical around the world and the situation has been worsening over the last 20 years in arid and semi-arid regions particularly in Mediterranean area. Salinity stress significantly affect the nutritional properties and quality traits of crops due to physiological and biochemical alterations in plants at different growth stage. During salinity stress, plants tend to activate different physiological and biochemical mechanisms to cope with the stress through altering their morphology, anatomy, water relations, photosynthesis, protein synthesis, primary and secondary metabolism and biochemical adaptations such as the antioxidative metabolism response. Therefore, it is important for breeders and producers to understand the influence of salinity on the composition of crops, for improvement of protein and oil quality (amino and fatty acid) under the salinity conditions. The aims of present review is to quantify the adverse effects of salinity on quality parameters of crops and management approaches for ameliorating the adverse effects of salinity stress to enhance the yield and grain quality of crops.