Mechanisms of plant response to salinity stress: current understanding and recent progress

Salinity is considered as a major abiotic stress for plants as it challenges plant growth and productivity severely. Plants have developed plenty of biochemical, physiological and metabolic strategies to deal with salt stress at multiple levels. A better understanding of these contrivances is an important step towards achieving the goal of sustainable development of agriculture. This review aims to provide a brief overview of our current understanding of plant salt-tolerance mechanisms from five aspects: specialized salt glands, ion homeostasis and osmotic adjustment, antioxidant defense system, hormonal regulation and modifications in membrane composition. Finally, we highlight unsolved issues that remain to be addressed in future studies.