Grain Legumes and Fear of Salt Stress: Focus on Mechanisms and Management Strategies

Abstract

Salinity is an ever-present major constraint and a major threat to legume crops, particularly in areas with irrigated agriculture. Legumes demonstrate high sensitivity, especially during vegetative and reproductive phases. This review gives an overview of legumes sensitivity to salt stress (SS) and mechanisms to cope with salinity stress under unfavorable conditions. It also focuses on the promising management approaches, i.e., agronomic practices, breeding approaches, and genome editing techniques to improve performance of legumes under SS. Now, the onus is on researchers to comprehend the plants physiological and molecular mechanisms, in addition to various responses as part of their stress tolerance strategy. Due to their ability to fix biological nitrogen, high protein contents, dietary fiber, and essential mineral contents, legumes have become a fascinating group of plants. There is an immense need to develop SS tolerant legume varieties to meet growing demand of protein worldwide. This review covering crucial areas ranging from effects, mechanisms, and management strategies, may elucidate further the ways to develop SS-tolerant varieties and to produce legume crops in unfavorable environments.