In river valleys of the world’s driest desert (The Atacama of South America) large stands of giant horsetail ( Equisetum giganteum) are found to tolerate soil water salinity up to at least half that of seawater.  This Free—open access paper reports how roots selectively exclude Na and take-up K in response to salinity while stomatal conductances [...]

Osmotic and salinity effects on germination Seeds in saline environments face a dilemma between allocating reserves to either osmotic balance or growth and development.  Zhang et al. show that barley seeds incubated in saline solutions germinate more rapidly than seeds in iso-osmotic PEG solutions. This suggests that barley seeds use salt as a metabolically cheap [...]

Microarray-analysis for components of salinity-stress tolerance Thiourea has been demonstrated to impart salinity-stress tolerance to seedlings of mustard, Brassica juncea. Srivastava et al.  perform a genome-wide transcriptome analysis of seeds treated with either salinity, or salinity plus thiourea. They identify 33 genes showing differential expression between the treatments, belonging to different signalling (ABA and other [...]