Under salt stress guard cells rewire ion transport and abscisic acid signaling

Soil salinity is an increasingly global problem which hampers plant growth and crop yield. Plant productivity depends on optimal water-use efficiency photosynthetic capacity balanced by stomatal conductance. Whether how behavior contributes to salt sensitivity or tolerance currently unknown. This work identifies guard cell-specific signaling networks exerted a salt-sensitive salt-tolerant under ionic osmotic stress conditions accompanied increasing NaCl loads. We challenged soil-grown Arabidopsis thaliana Thellungiella salsuginea plants with short- long-term monitored genome-wide gene expression signals of cells that determine their function. suffered from both regimes showed reduced conductance while displayed no obvious symptoms. The salt-dependent changes supported the ability halophyte maintain high potassium sodium ratios attenuate abscisic acid (ABA) pathway glycophyte kept activated despite fading ABA concentrations. Our study shows even different tolerances are manifested single cell level. Halophytic less sensitive than glycophytic cells, providing opportunities manipulate improve productivity.