ABSTRACT
Salinity is a major threat to modern agriculture. It is expected that the salinization of soils in arable areas will further increase by up to 30% by 2050 due to global climate change and as a consequence of irrigation. The process of crop domestication has led to a truncation of genetic variation present in the population of wild crop relatives. Albeit the Hordeum genus contains several interesting halophytic species with extreme salt resistance, these species have not been thoroughly explored for their potential to contribute to the genetic improvement of the crop’s salt tolerance. The substantial range of wild barley species deserves attention to be studied in detail due to salinity tolerance. The recent study displayed that halophytic Hordeum marinum and H. brevisubulatum plants are capable of controlling Na+ and Cl− concentrations in leaves at high salinity via fine-tuning of membrane transport and sequestration, accumulation of osmolytes, and minimization of energy costs. The application of multiple omics approaches will facilitate the discovery of new adaptation strategies to the high salinity. Therefore, these novel and advanced molecular tools such as NGS, genetic engineering and genome editing, proteomics and ionomics together with bioinformatics have to be directed toward discovering mechanisms of salt tolerance in wild barley species and identification of key genetic and physiological determinants developed during evolutional adaptation to the abiotic stresses, in particular salinity.
