我国干旱、半干旱地区面积占国土面积的52.5%，其中盐渍化耕地达5.4亿亩，占耕地面积的约30%。随着全球气温升高，盐碱和干旱等自然灾害越来越严重。我国是世界上最大的甘薯生产国，甘薯作为重要的粮食和能源作物之一可以种植于滩涂瘠薄土地。通过上一个国家自然科学基金项目的甘薯耐盐转录组分析，筛选克隆了耐盐抗旱相关的转录因子IbC3H18，该转录因子在盐旱胁迫下显著上调表达。本项目在此基础上，将IbC3H18导入甘薯，鉴定过表达及干扰表达甘薯植株的耐盐性和抗旱性，确认IbC3H18的功能；用酵母双杂筛选互作蛋白，并用双分子荧光互补和免疫共沉淀技术对其进行验证；用酵母单杂筛选上游基因、ChIP-seq筛选下游基因并进行鉴定，分析IbC3H18调控耐盐抗旱性的分子机理。研究结果不仅为甘薯耐盐抗旱育种提供重要的基因及材料，同时也为揭示甘薯耐盐抗旱性的调控网络提供理论依据。

Arid and semi-arid land covers 52.5% of the total land area in China, among which 540 million mu arable land is saline, accounting for about 30% of the cultivated land. With the global warming, salinity, drought and other natural disasters are becoming more and more serious. As one of important food and energy crops, sweetpotato enjoys the advantages of high and stable production on comparatively barren soil conditions, which makes China the largest sweetpotato producer in the world.Based on the analysis of salt-tolerant sweetpotato RNA-Seq data in the previous studies funded by National Natural Science Foundation, a salt and drought tolerance related transcription factor IbC3H18 was screened. IbC3H18 was cloned and its expression was significantly up-regulated under salt and drought stress. In this study, the salt and drought tolerant function of IbC3H18 will be identified using over-expression and RNA interference technology in sweetpotato. The yeast two-hybrid (Y2H), bimolecular fluorescence complementation (BiFC) and Co-Immunoprecipitation (Co-IP) technologies will be used to screen and identify the proteins that interact with IbC3H18. The upstream and downstream genes of IbC3H18 will be screened by yeast one hybrid (Y1H) and ChIP-seq technologies and their functions will be further identified, respectively. Moreover, the molecular mechanism involved in salt and drought tolerance of this transcription factor will be well characterized. The success of this research will not only provide important gene material for breeding sweetpotato varieties with salt and drought tolerance, but also provide the theoretical basis for the study of gene regulatory network about salt and drought tolerance of sweetpotato.