Abstract
Salinity is among the most challenging and devastating environmental problems which cause drastic decline in normal growth and developmental processes in crop plants. Plants have evolved several tolerance strategies to avert the damaging effects of high salinity. During the past few years most of the research is focused on increasing the salt tolerance of major food crops through the application of phytohormone producing beneficial microorganisms. During stress microbial phytohormones are having critical roles in modulating the physiology and biochemistry of plants so as to elicit a tolerance response to avoid stress. Induced plant growth and development of various plants by inoculation with PGPR having phytohormone, such as indole-3-acetic acid (IAA), cytokinins (CK), gibberelic acid (GA), salicylic acid (SA) and abscisic acid (ABA) producing ability, has been repeatedly documented. Present review discusses the role of phytohormones in ameliorating the salt stress-induced changes in plants and provides valuable insight into microbes evolved interactions with plant under hostile environmental conditions.