Fereshteh Bayat

One possible mechanism to avoid Na toxicity in the cytosol is compartmentalization of Na ions away from the cytosol. In the present work transgenic Arabidopsis plants overexpressing HvNHX2, a vacuolar Na /H antiporter gene from barley, were generated using Agrobacterium tumefaciens transformation. We show that these plants are able to grow normally in presence of 200 mM NaCl, while wild type Arabidopsis plants showed necrosis. When grown on MS medium containing NaCl, transgenic plants overexpressing HvNHX2 accumulated more Na in the shoots, and had longer roots in the early seedling stage. These results show that improved salt tolerance could be achieved by compartmentalization of Na in the vacuoles.