Salt stress and tomato resilience: understanding somatic and intergenerational priming mechanisms in plant adaptation

Section: Articles Published Date: 2025-04-01 Pages: 1-6 Views: 0 Downloads: 0

Authors

  • Zahra Karimi Department of Horticulture, School of Agriculture, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran
  • Leila Jafari Department of Horticulture, School of Agriculture, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran
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Abstract

Salt stress is a major environmental challenge that impacts agricultural productivity worldwide. Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum), a widely cultivated crop, is highly sensitive to salinity, which affects growth, yield, and quality. Recent studies have shown that tomato plants have the ability to adapt to salt stress through mechanisms such as somatic and intergenerational priming memory. Somatic priming refers to the ability of an individual plant to enhance its tolerance to stress after a previous exposure, while intergenerational priming involves the transmission of stress-induced adaptive traits from parent plants to their offspring. This paper examines the physiological, molecular, and epigenetic processes involved in these priming mechanisms, highlighting how these forms of memory can contribute to improved tomato resilience in saline environments. Understanding these processes provides a foundation for developing salt-tolerant tomato varieties through breeding and biotechnological approaches.  

Keywords

Salt stress, tomato resilience, somatic priming