Principal Investigator: José Luis Micol.
Investigators: Antonio Martínez Laborda, María Rosa Ponce Molet, Víctor Quesada Pérez and Pedro Piqueras Peral.
División de Genética. Universidad Miguel Hernández.

Characterization of Arabidopsis salt tolerant mutants

Progressive increase in soil salinity is one of the major constraints limiting crop productivity, a serious problem affecting some of the most important productive agricultural areas in our planet, including those of the Mediterranean coast of Spain.

With the purpose of contributing to the study of osmotic stress in plants, we have elected the model system Arabidopsis thaliana, due to its advantages for genetic and molecular analysis, for the induction of mutations and the isolation and study of genes involved salt tolerance. We have already obtained EMS, fast-neutron and T-DNA induced mutants able to germinate in the presence of high doses of NaCl.

Our objectives in this project include to characterize at the genetic and molecular levels the genes damaged in our salt tolerant mutants, as well as to obtain double mutant combinations, with the purpose of studying functional interactions among salt tolerant mutations.