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Horticulture Research 10,
Article number: uhac244 (2023)
doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/hr/uhac244
Views: 261
Received: 31 Aug 2022
Accepted: 24 Oct 2022
Published online: 26 Oct 2022
Increasing soil salinization seriously impairs plant growth and development, resulting in crop loss. The Salt-Overly-Sensitive (SOS) pathway is indispensable to the mitigation of Na + toxicity in plants under high salinity. However, whether natural variations of SOS2 contribute to salt tolerance has not been reported. Here a natural variation in the SlSOS2 promoter region was identified to be associated with root Na+/K+ ratio and the loss of salt resistance during tomato domestication. This natural variation contains an ABI4-binding cis-element and plays an important role in the repression of SlSOS2 expression. Genetic evidence revealed that SlSOS2 mutations increase root Na+/K+ ratio under salt stress conditions and thus attenuate salt resistance in tomato. Together, our findings uncovered a critical but previously unknown natural variation of SOS2 in salt resistance, which provides valuable natural resources for genetic breeding for salt resistance in cultivated tomatoes and other crops.