Halophytes are capable of resisting salinity, and their root system is the part in direct contact with the saline soil environment.

What is special about the roots of halophytes?

Halophytes are capable of resisting salinity, and their root system is the part in direct contact with the saline soil environment.

Why do halophytes put salt in roots?

Halophytes as Crops In arid regions, farmers often use groundwater to irrigate their crops. Even when salt concentrations in the groundwater are relatively low, salt can gradually accumulate in the soil as a result of high evaporation rates in these areas.

What are adaptations of halophytes?

Halophytes are well-adapted and thrive under high salinity by using two strategies, salt tolerance, and salt avoidance. Generally, halophytes follow three mechanisms of salt tolerance; reduction of the Na+ influx, compartmentalization, and excretion of sodium ions (Flowers and Colmer, 2008, 2015).

What are the special features of halophytes?

They appear as peg-like structures. The tips of these respiratory roots may be pointed. They possess numerous lenticels or pneumathodes on their surface and prominent aerenchyma enclosing large air cavities internally. The gaseous exchange takes place in these roots through the lenticels.

What is halophytes adaptation?

What are characteristics of halophytes?

The leaves in most of the halophytes are thick, entire, succulent, generally small-sized, and are often glassy in appearance. Some species are aphyllous. Stems and leaves of coastal aero halophytes show additional mode of adaptation to their habitats. Their surfaces are densely covered with trichomes.

How halophytes absorb water from the soil?

Other halophytes accumulate NaCl or synthesis osmotically compatible solutions such as proline, glycine betaine in their shoots to increase their ability to absorb water. Secreting salt from salt glands can reduce the salt level in certain halophytes.

What is the function of halophytes?

Halophytes actively control the uptake, storage, exclusion, and secretion of ions under saline conditions [14, 15, 16, 17].

What environment does halophytes live in?

salt marshes
Halophytes live in salt marshes and are exposed to excessive salt as well as physiological drought. The ice plant (Mesembryanthemum crystnllinuni) is a succulent that grows along sandy beaches of the California coast and is exposed to extreme salinity.

What are the important morphological features of halophytes?

Following are some of the important morphological features of halophytes. The special roots termed as pneumatophores or knees are present. They are negatively geotropic and come out of the soil. The part of the root outside the soil or swamp consists of perforations for exchange of gases i.e., oxygen and CO2.

Why do hydro halophytes have negatively geotropic roots?

In order to compensate this lack of soil aeration, the hydro halophytes develop negatively geotropic roots, called pneumatophores (breathing roots).

Why are halophytes so rare in plants?

The low frequency of occurrence of halophytes (about 0·14 % of named plant species) is at first sight surprising since at the time at which plants colonized the land, seawater contained substantial salt concentrations (about 30 g kg−1; Railsback et al., 1990).

Which plants are xerophytes and halophytes?

Most halophytes possess succulence as well. Plants of saline soil show characteristics of xerophytes, e.g., Suaeda, Salsola, Salicornia, Tamarix, Atriplex, Spartina. They may have succulence in leaves, stems or both.