Salinity is a major threat limiting the productivity of crop plants. A clear demand for improving the salinity tolerance of the major crop plants is imposed by the rapidly growing world population. This review summarizes the achievements of proteomic studies to elucidate the response mechanisms of selected model and crop plants to cope with salinity stress. We also aim at identifying research areas, which deserve increased attention in future proteome studies, as a prerequisite to identify novel targets for breeding strategies. Such areas include the impact of plant-microbial communities on the salinity tolerance of crops under field conditions, the importance of hormone signaling in abiotic stress tolerance, and the significance of control mechanisms underlying the observed changes in the proteome patterns. We briefly highlight the impact of novel tools for future proteome studies and argue for the use of integrated approaches. The evaluation of genetic resources by means of novel automated phenotyping facilities will have a large impact on the application of proteomics especially in combination with metabolomics or transcriptomics.

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The differential response to field salinity of the parents of the ITMI wheat mapping population (cv. Opata 85 and the synthetic hexaploid W7984) was exploited to perform a QTL analysis of the response to salinity stress of a set of agronomic traits over two seasons. The material was irrigated either with potable water (EC of 1.0 dS m -1 ) or with diluted seawater (12.0 dS m -1 ). Grain yield was positively correlated with tiller number, plant height, percentage survival, ear weight, ear length, grain number per ear, grain weight and thousand grain weight, and negatively with time to booting, anthesis and physiological maturity, under both the control and salinity stress treatments. In all, 22 QTL were detected under control conditions, and 36 under salinity stress. Of the latter, 13 were major loci (LOD [ 3.0) and eight were reproducible across both seasons. Chromosome 2D harboured 15 salinity stress associated QTL and chromosome 4A six such QTL. The remaining loci were located on chromosomes 2A, 5A, 6A, 7A, 1B, 4B, 3B, 6B, 7B and 6D.

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