Salinity exerts a severe detrimental effect on crop yields globally. Growth of plants in saline soils results in physiological stress, which disrupts the essential biochemical processes of respiration, photosynthesis, and transpiration. Understanding the molecular responses of plants exposed to salinity stress can inform future strategies to reduce agricultural losses due to salinity; however, it is imperative that signalling and functional response processes are connected to tailor these strategies. Previous research has revealed the important role that plant mitochondria play in the salinity response of plants. Review of this literature shows that 2 biochemical processes required for respiratory function are affected under salinity stress: the tricarboxylic acid cycle and the transport of metabolites across the inner mitochondrial membrane. However, the mechanisms by which components of these processes are affected or react to salinity stress are still far from understood. Here, we examine recent findings on the signal transduction pathways that lead to adaptive responses of plants to salinity and discuss how they can be involved in and be affected by modulation of the machinery of energy metabolism with attention to the role of the tricarboxylic acid cycle enzymes and mitochondrial membrane transporters in this process. Saline landscapes occur naturally, and many halophytes (salt tolerant plants) survive and complete their life cycle in these environments (Flowers & Colmer, 2015). Human activity including intense irrigation and land clearing can also cause soil salinity, as these activities lead to changes in the soil water table, which can contain high salt concentrations (Rengasamy, 2006). These agricultural practices result in a rising water table, which liberates soil solutes bringing them to the surface, creating salinized areas in previously productive land (Rengasamy, 2006). This severely limits crop production in these areas as typically elite high yielding crop varieties cannot tolerate these high salt concentrations (Roy, Negrão, & Tester, 2014).Although the salinization of soils has and is increasingly limiting crop production in many areas of the world (Sha Valli Khan, Nagamallaiah, Dhanunjay, Sergeant, & Hausman, 2014), reliable measures of salt-affected land are very difficult to obtain because salinity varies both spatially and temporally. Nevertheless, a number of studies have attempted to estimate the extent of soil salinity.According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, it is estimated that approximately 20% of all global irrigated land has become salt-affected and this percentage is expected to continue to increase over time (FAO, 2009;Parihar, Singh, Singh, Singh, & Prasad, 2014). It was further estimated that this salinization of irrigated
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