Salt Tolerance

According to United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), over 10% of the irrigated land in the world has been damaged by salt accumulation. Salinity, by inhibiting growth and crop yield, is a severe and increasing constraint on agricultural productivity. Continued, inappropriate farming practices exacerbate this problem. Salt tolerance in plants is considered to be a quantitative trait involving multiple genes and attempts to improve this property in plants by traditional breeding have met with limited success. FuturaGene has an active program to address this challenge, utilizing endogenous plant genes involved in salt stress responses in plants.

FuturaGene has licensed rights to critical genes involved in the Salt Overly Sensitive (SOS) pathway, which are involved in controlling the level of the toxic sodium ion (Na+) in the cytosol. These genes play important roles in a number of mechanisms for salt control that include:

1. minimizing Na+ entry into the cell,
2. secretion  of Na+ from the cell, and
3. sequestration of Na+ from the cytosol into vacuoles.

Prototype studies have been carried out in a number of species to test the effect of these genes.