Global climate change, including sea level rise and inland saltwater intrusion, are major issues of great concern to the world, because they seriously affect coastal ecosystems as well as natural resources. Plant resources on coastal sand have the ability to live, grow and develop in dry environmental conditions with high salt concentrations. Vietnam is located in the tropical region, with a coastline of over 3,000 km long (including islands), with a high level of biodiversity in ecosystems as well as plant species, especially economically important tree species. It is both drought tolerant and salt tolerant in coastal sandy areas. Therefore, “Provide basis information on halophytes genetic resources along coastal inland salt and island of Vietnam” project is necessary to provide solutions to preserve and develop some resilient plant genetic resources before their distribution areas are lost due to rising sea levels.
Project goals
- Build a list of valuable and salt-tolerant plants on land;
- Build a saltwater database to serve conservation and future development;
- Determine the correlation of salt tolerance gene expression between correlated species;
- Building evolutionary relationships related to salt tolerance based on salt tolerance gene data;
- Breeding some genetic resources with economic implications for conservation and future development.
Social impact
The database of genetic resources of tree species that have both economic value and the ability to withstand salt and drought serves as a basis for conservation and sustainable development of coastal sandy ecosystems, as well as for development of resilient crops in the future.