New breed: Sergey Shabala who is involved with a project using quinoa to breed salt-tolerant crops.

QUINOA could hold the key to breeding salt-tolerant crops, according to a study.

The finding could prove instrumental in long-term efforts to address global food security.

The research, published in the journal Cell Research, found that quinoa, which is naturally salt-tolerant, could serve as a model for developing salt-tolerant crops.

This could include related crops such as spinach and sugar beets.

Co-author of the report is Sergey ­Shabala, from the University of Tasmania’s School of Land and Food.

Professor Shabala said intensification of agricultural production and heavy irrigation posed a significant challenge for global food security.

“Unsustainable agriculture practices can cause soil erosion and salinity, which stunts the growth of crops and over a long period can lead to infertile soils,” he said.

“This research is helping to ­address this challenge by taking a new ­approach to the breeding of salt-tolerant crops.”

Prof Shabala said the team had focused on quinoa due to its natural resistance to abiotic stresses such as salinity, drought and low temperatures.

“The remarkable salt-tolerance quality of quinoa can be attributed to epidermal bladder cells, which have a volume around 1000 times greater of that of normal epidermal cells,” he said.

Researchers have generated a high-quality genome draft using an inbred line of a quinoa cultivar.

This has provided insights and enabled the identification of genes involved in salinity tolerance, which will provide the basis for molecular breeding in quinoa.

The research is a collaboration ­between the University of Tasmania, Shanghai Centre for Plant Stress Biology and the University of Wurzburg.