Physiology of salt tolerance M. Phil Botany 1stSemester

3 Credit hours

Dr. Habib-ur-Rehman Athar

e-mail: ; Ext 2522

Place: Lab-I IPAB; Every Tuesday 12:00-1:00; Thursday 1:00-2:00, Friday 12:00-1:00pm

This course aims at qualifying M.Phil Botany students to work with the complex challenges of real-life crop production under saline environment. Students will be given tools to analyse key parameters in plants growing in saline environment. This course will also helpful in developing independence and to synthesize their own knowledge from research papers, book chapters in order to carryout their research as well as to suggest solutions to the often open-ended problems within plant production.

The course will start with an overview and discussion of the key elements in economic growth of any country, population dynamics, current trends and future needs of improvedplant production in actual context (sustainable agriculture). Types of saline soil, salt stress, how to measure salinity, adverse effects of salt stress on plants, plant adaptations to salt stress, strategies for crop improvement against salt stress will be introduced.

Knowledge:
- Demonstrate overview of population dynamics, economics of the country, current and future needs of improved crop productivity

- Critically analysis on impacts of salt stress on crop production and their mitigation.
- Describe the complexity of physiological and biochemical mechanism of salt tolerance in crops

- Describe the impact of salt stress on plant functioning and adaptation at various levels of integration from the molecular, biochemical and physiological level to a whole plant level

- Demonstrate overview of strategies and implementation of new technologies for improved crop production

- Refer to laboratory and field techniques used in plant ecophysiological research

Learning Outcome: The objective of the course is to enable students to understand mechanism of salt tolerance in plants, enable the students to work with different kinds of crops under saline environment, and enable the students to analyse data and give recommendation about crop production under salt stress.

Skills:
• Analyse and react on problems related to plant growth in arid and semi arid regions caused by exposure to salt affected soils

• Use, transfer, evaluate and judge strategies for improvement of plant tolerance against salt stress by conventional breeding and advanced molecular biology techniques.

Topics / Date
1 / Current scenario of world population and food security / 19.01.2010
2 / World food security and crop improvement / 21.01.2010
3 / Crop productivity as affected by various abiotic stresses / 22.01.2010
4 / Salinity – a major menace for crop production throughout the history of civilization world over / 26.01.2010
5 / Types of Saline soil / 28.01.2010
6 / How to measure the salinity / 29.01.2010
7 / Extent of salinity stress –in world and pakistan / 2.02.2010
8 / How much does salinity cost? / 4.02.2010
9 / Need to develop salt tolerant crops / 5.02.2010
10 / Adverse effects of salt stress on plants / 9.02.2010
11 / Causes of adverse effects of salt stress / 11.02.2010
12 / Osmotic stress / 12.02.2010
13 / Specific ion toxicity / 16.02.2010
14 / Nutritional imbalance / 18.02.2010
15 / Hormonal imbalance / 19.02.2010
16 / Oxidative stress / 23.02.2010
17 / Responses of crops to salt stress / 25.02.2010
18 / Morphological responses to salt stress on germination and early seedling growth / 26.02.2010
MID TERM EXAM
19 / Physiological and biochemical responses to salt stress / 9.03.2010
20 / Physiological responses to salt stress / 11.03.2010
21 / Physiological responses to salt stress / 12.03.2010
22 / Plant responses to salt stress in terms of various biochemical attributes / 16.03.2010
23 / Plant responses to salt stress in terms of various biochemical attributes / 18.03.2010
24 / Strategies for improving crop efficiency against salt stress / 19.03.2010
25 / Screening and selection for salt tolerance / 23.03.2010
Screening and selection for salt tolerance / 25.03.2010
Screening and selection for salt tolerance / 26.03.2010
Conventional breeding for crop improvement for salinity tolerance / 30.03.2010
Conventional breeding for crop improvement for salinity tolerance / 1.04.2010
Conventional breeding for crop improvement for salinity tolerance / 2.04.2010
Contribution of Pakistan in world wide struggles for improving crops against salt tolerance / 6.04.2010
Contribution of Institute of Pure and Applied Biology, Bahauddin Zakariya University Multan in world wide struggles for improving crops against salt tolerance / 8.04.2010
Molecular biology approaches to increase crop salt tolerance / 9.04.2010
Molecular biology approaches to increase crop salt tolerance / 13.04.2010
Contribution of Pakistan (NIBGE, CEMB) in world wide struggles for improving crops against salt tolerance using Genetic Engineering / 15.04.2010
Shotgun approaches to improve crop salt tolerance / 16.04.2010
Shotgun approaches to improve crop salt tolerance / 20.04.2010
Shotgun approaches to improve crop salt tolerance / 22.04.2010
Shotgun approaches to improve crop salt tolerance / 23.04.2010
Contribution of Pakistan in world wide struggles for improving crops against salt tolerance: Overview / 27.04.2010
Contribution of Prof Dr M Ashraf, in world wide struggles for improving crops against salt tolerance: Overview / 29.04.2010
Current scenario and future prospects / 30.04.2010
Discussion, remainder work / 4.05.2010
Presentations, discussion / 6.05.2010
Presentations, discussion / 7.05.2010
FINAL TERM EXAM

All handouts, paper readings will be delivered through interactive yahoo group PHYSIOLOGIA

All students should join PHYSIOLOGIA to receive HANDOUTS in PDFs

Physiologia

Recommended Books

  1. André Läuchli. Ulrich Lüttge. 2002. Salinity: Environment – Plants – Molecules, KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS, New York
  2. Teruhiro Takabe, Ashwani K. Rai (Editors) 2006. Abiotic Stress Tolerance in Plants : Toward the Improvement of Global Environment and Food; By; Springer
  3. Jenks, Hasegawa and Jain. 2007. Advances in Molecular Breeding towards Drought and Salt Tolerant Crops; Springer.
  4. Anthony Yeo and Timothy J. Flowers 2007. Plant Solute Transport; Blackwell Publishing
  5. Hamlyn G. Jones, T. J. Flowers, M. B. Jones 2008 Plants Under Stress: Biochemistry, Physiology and Ecology and Their Application to Plant Improvement; 267p., CambridgeUniversity Press
  6. Lambers, Hans, Pons, Thijs L., Chapin, F. Stuart, III. 2008. Plant Physiological Ecology Springer Verlag
  7. Matthew A. Jenks and Andrew J. Wood. 2009 Genes for Plant Abiotic Stress ToleranceJohn Wiley & Sons.
  8. Luis Alfonso del Rio and Alain Pupp 2009 Reactive Oxygen Species in Plant Signaling (Signaling and Communication in Plants) Springer.
  9. M. Ashraf, M. Ozturk, H. R. Athar 2009. Salinity and Water Stress: Improving Crop Efficiency; Edited by, Springer.

Recommended Research articles

  • RanaMunns, 2002 Comparative physiology of salt and water stress.
  • Mark Tester and Romola Davenport, 2003Sodium tolerance and sodium transport in plants
  • E.G. Barrett-Lennard, 2003Interaction between waterlogging and salinity in plants
  • RanaMunns and Richard A. James, 2003 Screening methods for salinity tolerance: a case study with tetraploid wheat
  • T.J. Flowers, 2003 Improving crop salt tolerance
  • Toshio Yamaguchi and Eduardo Blumwald, 2005 Developing salt-tolerant crop plants: challenges and opportunities
  • RanaMunns, Richard A. James and Andre Lauchli, 2006 Approaches to increasing the salt tolerance of wheat and other cereals
  • RanaMunns and Mark Tester, 2008 Mechanisms of Salinity Tolerance

Recommended Journals

Plant Physiology

Plant Cell, and Environment

Journal of Experimental Botany

Plant Growth regulation

Journal of Plant Physiology

Photosynthetica

Photosynthesis Research

Planta

Plant Science

Biologia Plantarum

Annual Reviews of Plant Biology and Molecular Biology

Assignments submission:

Assignments