Nucleotide sequences and corresponding polypeptides conferring modulated growth rate and biomass in plants grown in saline conditions

A plant cell transformed with a recombinant nucleic acid molecule, wherein the recombinant nucleic acid molecule comprises a promoter operably linked to a nucleic acid, wherein the promoter and the nucleic acid are heterologous to each other, wherein said nucleic acid comprises a nucleotide sequence selected from the group consisting of:

• (a) a nucleotide sequence that encodes a protein comprising an amino acid sequence that has at least 95% amino acid sequence identity to the amino acid sequence of SEQ ID NO:
• 106;
• (b) a nucleotide sequence that encodes a protein that comprises the amino acid sequence of SEQ ID NO:
• 106;
• (c) a nucleotide sequence comprising the polynucleotide sequence of SEQ ID NO:105, wherein the nucleotide sequence encodes the protein as set forth in SEQ ID NO:
• 6;
• and
• (d) a nucleotide sequence comprising a polynucleotide sequence that has at least 95% nucleotide sequence identity to the nucleotide sequence as set forth in SEQ ID NO:105 and encodes a protein having the functional activity of SEQ ID NO:
• 6, and
• wherein a transformed plant produced from said transformed plant cell expresses said protein of parts (a), (b), (c) or (d) and exhibits increased salt tolerance as compared to a control plant of the same species that does not comprise said recombinant nucleic acid and is grown under identical growth conditions.