Detalle de: Genomics Advances in olive tree (Olea europaea subsp. europaea L.) to Mitigate the Effects of Soil Salinisation: Stepping Towards the 'Smart Oliviculture'

Soil salinisation is threatening crop sustainability worldwide mainly due to the anthropogenic climate change. To avoid the excessive ion concentration in soils, plants have developed mechanisms, which have been deeply studied in many model plants and widely reviewed in the scientific literature. Nevertheless, the economically relevant olive tree (Olea europaea subsp. europaea L.), being very exposed to soil salinisation, deserves a specific review, where morphological and biochemical adaptations, signalling pathways involved, and the interplay of transcriptomics and metagenomics adaptations, are described. Variations in the olive tree microbiota due to soil salinisation and usual agricultural practices, and how might biostimulants and chemical amendments may allow the cultivation in salinised soils. Although not concluding, it seems that tolerance in olive cultivars is associated with effective mechanisms of ion exclusion and retention in the root, limiting the accumulation of these ions into actively growing shoots. The emerging importance of post-translational modifications as a source of salt tolerance is highlighted. Also, a comprehensive list of 97 olive cultivars classified by salt tolerance is given. The future advantages of engineering specific metacaspases involved in the programmed cell death and autophagy pathways to rapidly rise salt-tolerant cultivars or rootstocks is considered. An overview of bioinformatic tools focused on olive tree, as well as the machine learning approaches to study plant stress from the multi-omics perspective invites to hypothesise that they can foster the development of salt-tolerant cultivars or rootstocks adapted to soil salinisation and pave the way for a future 'smart oliviculture' in the seeking of more productive and sustainable oliviculture under salt stress.