Tobacco (Nicofiana tabacum L.) cells growing heterotrophically in the light on supplied sucrose (SO) have previously been adapted to grow in 428 mM NaCl (S25). Among the changes occurring in salinity-adapted cell cultures are (a) elevated levels of chlorophyll compared to unadapted cells; (b) decreased levels of starch; (c) alterations in chloroplast ultrastructure, including loss of starch grains, increased thylakoid membrane structure, and the presence of plastoglobules; and (d) increased rates of O, evolution, CO, fixation, and photophosphorylation relative to SO cells. These latter changes apparently derive from the fact that thylakoid membranes in S25 cells contain higher levels of photosystem I-and 11-associated proteins as well as thylakoid ATPase components. S25 chloroplasts contain immunologically detectable levels of ribulose-1 ,S-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase, whereas SO completely lack the enzyme. These changes taken together suggest that even in the presente of sucrose, S25 cells have acquired a significant degree of salt-tolerant photosynthetic competence. This salt-tolerant photoysynthetic capability manifests itself in plants backcrossed with normal plants for three generations. These plants contain chloroplasts that demonstrate in vitro more salt-tolerant CO, fixation, O, evolution, and photophosphorylation than do backcross progeny of plants regenerated from SO cultures.Numerous cell-suspension culture lines able to grow in the presence of salt-induced osmotic stress have been established (Dix and Street, 1975;Nabors et al., 1975;Tyagi et al., 1981;Kochba et al., 1982; Rangan and Vasil, 1983;Watad et al., 1983;Pandey and Ganapathy, 1984; Binzel et al., 1985;Rains, 1989;Plaut et al., 1991) for the purpose of studying cellular adaptation to salinity stress, and these cell lines have provided much information about salinity tolerance at the cellular level. The tobacco cell line chosen for the present study has been widely studied in this regard. Binzel et al. (1985) established a heterotrophically growing, salt-adapted cell line of tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum L. var Wisconsin 38) by gradually adapting cells to increasing concentrations of NaC1. The adapted cell line showed substantially greater growth in salt-containing media than did previously unadapted cells. However, adapted cells growing in salt showed reduced cell expansion and fresh weight gain but equivalent dry weight gain ' This is publication No. 6-955101 of the Alabama Agricultura1 (Binzel et al., 1985;Bressan et al., 1990) when compared to unadapted cells growing without salt.Adaptation of tobacco cells to salt has also been shown to involve the accumulation of a 26-kD, thaumatin-like protein, called osmotin (Ericson and Alfinito, 1984;Singh et al., 1985Singh et al., , 1987; alterations in the cell wall and extracellular polysaccharides (Iraki et al., 1989a(Iraki et al., , 1989b; the accumulation of various osmolytes, including Suc and Pro (Binzel et al., 1987); and the accumulation and partitioning of inorganic ions such as p...