Perspective Chapter: Enhancing Plant Resilience to Salinity Induced Oxidative Stress – Role of Exogenous Elicitors

Abstract

Plants face various abiotic stresses, among which soil salinity is a significant threat. It reduces plants’ growth and development remarkably due to its detrimental effects. Salt stress occurs when soluble salts accumulate in the soil solution. A considerable portion of the world’s soil is negatively impacted by salinity, even at low concentrations. Salinity can hinder plant physiological processes by inducing osmotic stress and ionic toxicity, generating excessive reactive oxygen species (ROS) and leading to oxidative stress within plant cells. The formation of ROS is a normal plant metabolic phenomenon, but excessive ROS-induced oxidative stress can disrupt membrane activities, enzymes, and cell walls, cause cell damage, and, in severe cases, plant death. Various strategies, such as chemical substances and plant growth-promoting substances, are applied exogenously to diminish ROS-induced oxidative stress. Additionally, the use of rhizobacteria that have plant growth-promoting traits, organic amendments, rhizospheric fungi, and various genetic approaches are considered when addressing salt stress in plants. These mechanisms for scavenging ROS enhance plants’ tolerance to saline stress by developing an antioxidant defense system, reducing oxidative damage at the cellular level, and maintaining ion homeostasis. This chapter focuses on the latest research regarding the alleviation of salinity-induced oxidative stress in several crops through the exogenous application of stress elicitors.