Green Revolution-associated DELLA accumulation enhances salt tolerance in cereals by disrupting INDETERMINATE SPIKELET1 biomolecular condensates

The semi-dwarf cereal varieties bred during the Green Revolution revolutionized global agriculture under optimal growing conditions, but their performance in stressful environments—, particularly under soil salinity, has remained an unresolved paradox. Here, we show that Green Revolution varieties (GRVs) of rice and wheat exhibit significantly enhanced salt tolerance compared with their pre-Green Revolution cultivated counterparts (non-GRVs), mediated by stress-induced accumulation of DELLA proteins. Through integrated metabolomic and transcriptomic analyses, we demonstrate that DELLAs maintain "growth-stress" balance by rewiring sugar–amino acid metabolic networks. At the molecular level, DELLAs antagonize INDETERMINATE SPIKELET1 (IDS1), a growth-promoting transcription factor that impairs salt tolerance through biomolecular condensation. Structural and functional analyses demonstrate that DELLAs physically dissolve IDS1 condensates, thereby reprogramming transcriptional networks. Remarkably, expression of a dominant-negative OsIDS1 variant ( OsIDS1 EARm ), which attenuates condensation and transcriptional repression, confers both semi-dwarf architecture and enhanced salt tolerance in non-GRVs, outperforming conventional Green Revolution alleles by producing a 35% yield gain (∼170 kg ha⁻¹) in saline fields. Collectively, our work resolves the mechanistic basis of stress adaptation in semi-dwarf crops and establishes a novel paradigm for the development of stress-resilient crops through targeted manipulation of transcriptional condensates.