With the continuous increase of population, the available arable land area is decreasing year by year, soil salinization is becoming more and more serious, the range of crop planting is shrinking, and soil salinization has become a major limiting factor affecting the increase of crop yield. In this paper, the latest advances in the research on the mechanism of plant salt tolerance, the cloning of salt-related genes and their applications in genetic engineering were reviewed, and the application prospect of salt tolerant transgenic plants was also prospected in order to provide reference for the breeding of salt tolerance transgenic plants.