Advances in molecular mechanisms of plant adaptation to soil stress

Soil stress refers to the unfavorable environment to plant growth and survival, such as saline-alkali, acidic, waterlogging and so on. Plants have evolved a certain amount of mechanisms to adapt to soil stresses. Understanding the physiological response in molecular levels is important base for breeding and nutrient management in agricultural production. Through more than 30 years of efforts, a number of international leading research results have been carried out and some key breakthroughs were achieved by Chinese scholars, especially in such fields of plant nutrition biology like aluminum toxicity, iron toxicity and saline-alkali stress. The paper summarized the recent progress in the mentioned soil stress adaptation mechanisms in briefly. One of the mechanisms of plant resistance to aluminum is that the STOP1 as the core is formed. ALR1 has been identified as an aluminum receptor to regulate the aluminum resistance. The molecular mechanism of rhizosphere iron regulating ammonium-tolerance and nitrogen use efficiency was found. The TaSPL6-D gene, which can improve wheat salt tolerance and does not affect spike development, has been obtained.