Journal of Plant Sciences1816-4951xxxx-xxxxxAcademic Journals Inc.10.3923/jps.2010.376.390JosephBaby JiniD. 4201054Salt stress is one of the major abiotic stresses faced by plants, which adversely affect their productivity, affects large terrestrial areas of the world; the need to produce salt-tolerant crops is evident. Programmed Cell Death (PCD) plays an important role in mediating plant adaptive responses to the adverse environment such as salinity. Salinity that causes PCD in plant cells and is a substantial constraint to crop production. Two main approaches are being used to improve salt tolerance: (1) the exploitation of natural genetic variations, either through direct selection in stressful environments or through mapping quantitative trait loci and subsequent marker-assisted selection and (2) the generation of transgenic plants to introduce novel genes or to alter expression levels of the existing genes to affect the degree of salt stress tolerance. 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