ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Salt tolerance of crops

When plants grow, they need certain things like water, air, and nutrients to stay healthy. Sometimes, they can also face challenges like having too much salt in their soil. Salt is a mineral that can be harmful to plants if there's too much of it.

Just like how we humans need to watch our salt intake, plants need to manage the amount of salt they take in too. This is where salt tolerance comes in. Some plants are better able to tolerate high levels of salt in their soil, while others struggle and can even die if exposed to too much salt.

Farmers and scientists have worked hard to help crops become more salt tolerant so that they can grow in areas with salty soil. This involves various techniques such as breeding plants that are naturally more resilient to salt, using special fertilizers that can help plants deal with salt stress, and even using genetic engineering to modify plant genes to be more salt tolerant.

By making crops more salt tolerant, it has become possible to grow food in areas that were once too salty for crops to survive. This helps farmers produce more food for the growing population, and it also helps to make agriculture more resilient in the face of climate change and other environmental challenges.