Salt Stress Responses and Tolerance in Soybean

Abstract

Soybean is one of the major oil crops with multiple uses which is gaining popularity worldwide. Apart from the edible oil, this crop provides various food materials for humans as well as feeds and fodder for animals. Although soybean is suitable for a wide range of soils and climates, it is sensitive to different abiotic stress such as salinity, drought, metal/metalloid toxicity, and extreme temperatures. Among them, soil salinity is one of the major threats to soybean production and the higher yield of soybean is often limited by salt stress. Salt stress negatively affects soybean seedling establishment, growth, physiology, metabolism, and the ultimate yield and quality of crops. At cellular level, salt stress results in the excess generation of reactive oxygen species and creates oxidative stress. However, these responses are greatly varied among the genotypes. Therefore, finding the precise plant responses and appropriate adaptive features is very important to develop salt tolerant soybean varieties. In this connection, researchers have reported many physiological, molecular, and agronomic approaches in enhancing salt tolerance in soybean. However, these endeavors are still in the primary stage and need to be fine-tuned. In this chapter, we summarized the recent reports on the soybean responses to salt stress and the different mechanisms to confer stress tolerance.