Soil salinity is a key abiotic-stress and poses serious threats to crop yields and quality of produce. Owing to the underlying complexity, conventional breeding programs have met with limited success. Even genetic engineering approaches, via transferring/overexpressing a single 'direct action gene' per event did not yield optimal results. Nevertheless, the biotechnological advents in last decade coupled with the availability of genomic sequences of major crops and model plants have opened new vistas for understanding salinity-responses and improving salinity tolerance in important glycophytic crops. Our goal is to summarize these findings for those who wish to understand and target the molecular mechanisms for producing salt-tolerant and high-yielding crops. Through this 2-volume book series, we critically assess the potential venues for imparting salt stress tolerance to major crops in the post-genomic era. Accordingly, perspectives on improving crop salinity tolerance by targeting the sensory, ion-transport and signaling mechanisms were presented in Volume 1.  Volume 2 now focuses on the potency of post-genomic era tools that include RNAi, genomic intervention, genome editing and systems biology approaches for producing salt tolerant crops.

1. Salinity responses and adaptive mechanisms in halophytes and their exploitation for producing salinity tolerant crops BY  Karim Ben Hamed, Amira Dabbous, Hassan El Shaer, Chedly Abdely.- 2. The involvement of different secondary metabolites in salinity tolerance of crops BY Oksana Sytar, Mbarki Sonia, Marek Zivcak, Marian Brestic.- 3. Exploring halotolerant rhizomicrobes as a pool of potent genes for engineering salt stress tolerance in crops BY Neveen Talaat.- 4. Regulation and modification of the epigenome for enhanced salinity tolerance in crop plants BY Minoru Ueda, Kaori Sako, Motoaki Seki.- 5. Manipulating programmed cell death pathways for enhancing salinity tolerance in crops BY Ahmad Arzani.- 6. Helicases and their Importance in Abiotic Stresses BY Zeba I. Seraj, Sabrina M. Elias, Sudip Biswas, Narendra Tuteja.- 7. miRNAs: the game changer in producing salinity stress tolerant crops BY Ratanesh Kumar, Sudhir Kumar & Neeti Sanan-Mishra.- 8. Genomic roadmaps for augmenting salinity stress tolerance in crop plants BY Suprasanna P, Ghuge SA, Patade VY, Mirajkar SJ, Nikalje GC.- 9. Advances in genetics and breeding of salt tolerance in soybean BY Huatao Chen, Heng Ye, Tuyen D. Do, Jianfeng Zhou, Babu Valliyodan, Grover J. Shannon, Pengyin Chen, Xin Chen, Henry T. Nguyen.- 10. Proteomics perspectives in post-genomic era for producing salinity stress tolerant crops BY Pannaga Krishnamurthy, Lin Qingsong, Prakash P Kumar.- 11. Metabolomics for crop improvement against salinity stress BY Luisa D'Amelia, Emilia dell'Aversana, Pasqualina Woodrow, Loredana F. Ciarmiello, Petronia Carillo.- 12. Enhancing Crop Productivity in Saline Environment Using Nanobiotechnology BY Pragati Misra, Saumya Shukla, Preeti Rajoriya, Pradeep K. Shukla.- 13. Systems biology approach for elucidation of plant responses to salinity stress BY Amrita Srivastav, Tushar Khare, Vinay Kumar.<p></p><p></p>