Research Information System
Turkish Journal of Agriculture and Forestry, vol.49, no.1, pp.1-23, 2025 (SCI-Expanded)
Excessive salinity poses serious threats to crop productivity and global food security. Salt stress reduces crop growth and final productivity by inducing ionic, osmotic, and oxidative damage. Applying plant growth hormones is thought to be an efficient method of reducing the negative effects of salinity. Brassinosteroids (BRs) are plant hormones that have demonstrated appreciable effects against different abiotic stresses. BRs can mitigate the deleterious impacts of salt stress by improving water and nutrient uptake, membrane stability, antioxidant activities, and osmolyte synthesis while maintaining the hormonal balance. Furthermore, BRs can also improve the metabolic and molecular responses of plants to help them counter the toxic effects of salinity, and they interact with sugars, proteins, amino acids, and phytohormones to regulate metabolic functioning to increase adaptation against salinity. As vital hormones, BRs are also involved in the signaling pathways of genes, proteins, and enzymes that work to defend plant cells from the toxic effects of salinity. Transgenic plants with improved BR synthesis have shown improved salt tolerance, and genome-wide studies encoding BR genes suggest their roles in plant growth and salt tolerance. The present review discusses the role of BRs in mitigating salinity toxicity through different mechanisms, crosstalk, and the interactions of BRs with other osmolytes and phytohormones. This review will provide knowledge to support the development of salt-tolerant crops and ensure sustainable crop production.