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Development of Stress Tolerant Plants
Efforts are also underway for the development of plants resistant to abiotic stresses, through the use of techniques of tissue culture and genetic engineering. Salinity, acidity and aluminium toxicity are the most important among these abiotic stresses.

Cell lines exhibiting resistance or relative tolerance to salt stress have been selected in a large number of crop species and can be used for plantation on degraded lands suffering with salinity. These plant species include the following: Brassica spp.; Capsicum annuum, Cicer arietinum, Citrus aurantium, C. sinensis, Daucus carota, Hordeum jubatum, H. vulgare, Nicotitllla tabacum, N. sylvestris, Oryza sativa, Prunus hybrids, Solanum tuberosum, Triticum aestivum, Vitis rupestris and Sapindus trifoliata.

There are also tree species,  that exhibit moderate resistance to salinity and, therefore can be used for plantation on saline soils. There include the following : Prosopisspiciera, Buter monosperma, Terminalia bellerica, etc. Efforts are also underway to understand the molecular basis of salt tolerance and to isolate genes responsible for this attribute, so that salt tolerant plants can be developed through the use of genetic engineering.

In vitro selection for tolerance to aluminium toxicity has also been successful in tomato, soybean, rice, barley, and wheat. Regenerants of selected lines can be used for growing plants in acidic soils with aluminium toxicity. Man made synthetic crop 'triticale' has also been found suitable for growing it (i) on acid soils in countries like Poland. Kenya, Ethiopia, India, Ecuador, Brazil, Mexico, etc.; (ii) on dry and sandy soils (e.g. Savanna region of Brazil and some marginal lands in Asia); (iii) on alkaline and calcareous soils (e.g. in Mexico, Spain, Portugal, USA) and (iv) on mineral (e.g. Cu, Mn, Zn) deficient and high boron soils (e.g. Australia).

In China, a number of new varieties of rice, wheat and tobacco have been developed through anther culture, some of them showing stress resistance with broad adaptability. For instance, rice cultivars Zhong Hua 10 and Zhong Hua 11 have a high degree of drought resistance and have been planted on more than 200,000 hectares of land in China.