Physio-Chemical and Molecular Characterization of Salinity Stress in Wheat: Mitigation Approaches and Future Perspectives

Wheat constitutes the backbone of global food supplies, and its production is directly linked to the food and nutritional security of the mounting population. Wheat is vulnerable to abiotic stresses like heat, salinity, and drought. These abiotic stresses tend to reduce the food security of the increasing population by reducing wheat production and nutritional quality. Among abiotic stresses, salinity stress (SS) has emerged as the most prevailing stress in modern high-input wheat farming systems, as it severely hampers crop growth by inducing numerous physiological, biochemical, and molecular alterations. Different genomic approaches, proteomics tools, phenomics, transcriptomics, and metabolomics approaches have been applied to overcome the adverse impacts of salinity stress and increase wheat productivity on a per unit land area basis. In this study, the adverse effects of salt stress on wheat have been objectively elaborated, along with highlighting conceivable mechanisms to deal with salt stress, as well as ion and hormonal management alternatives enabling wheat to mitigate its deleterious impacts.