Genetic engineering of salt and drought tolerance in rice cultivars.

Among environmental factors affecting crop productivity, salinity and drought appear the most detrimental, especially in South East asia countries. The persistence of the importance of this problem means that there are not easy solution although, increasing salt and drought tolerance has been for years the major objective of plant breeding programs for regions where soil salinity is high, or rainfall or irrigation supply limited. Therefore new biotechnololical tools have a potential to contribute significantly to the improvement of drought and salt tolerance. In that context, a major advance will be the obtention of relevant halotolerant and osmotc tolerance genes as well as a sufficient transformation efficiency of the considered crop.