How stalk cells provide for salt bladder-based salinity tolerance to quinoa.

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As an emerging international crop, the halophyte Chenopodium quinoa has great potential to enhance global food security. Quinoa, like a large fraction of halophytes, use so-called bladder cells to dump excess salt. These leaf structures are formed by specialized trichomes consisting of an epidermis cell, a stalk cell and the bladder cell. Through molecular and biophysical analyses, we have gained first insights on the transporters that mediate salt import in to the bladder cell. Sodium, chloride and metabolites, which the bladder imports from the leaf, need to be shuttled across the stalk cell. The stalk cell thus operates as a selectivity filter and flux controller. In this project, we will examine the transport biology of stalk cells to understand salt bladder-based salt tolerance in the pseudo-cereal crop plant quinoa, to provide knowledge for breeding crop varieties equipped to tolerate soil salinity.