Salicylic Acid Applications in Plant Abiotic Stress Tolerance

Salicylic acid (SA) is a key phytohormone that enhances plant resilience to a range of abiotic stresses, including drought, salinity, chilling and heat. By modulating antioxidant defences, osmoprotectant synthesis and stomatal movement, SA orchestrates a protective network that mitigates reactive oxygen species (ROS) damage, maintains cellular homeostasis and sustains photosynthetic efficiency. Its modes of application—seed priming, foliar spray and rootstock‐scion transport in grafted systems—have shown promise across major crops, offering practical routes to bolster yield stability under increasingly unpredictable environmental conditions.

Research from Nature Portfolio

Recent work using nanosensor multiplexing in Brassica rapa has revealed the temporal interplay between hydrogen peroxide and SA signals under distinct stress regimes such as light shock, heat and mechanical wounding. Real-time monitoring uncovered unique waveform signatures for each stress, leading to a kinetic model in which an early ROS pulse encodes stress identity and triggers subsequent SA accumulation. This spatio-temporal insight into stress signalling paves the way for pre-symptomatic detection systems and targeted breeding of crops with optimised SA-mediated resilience.

Salicylic Acid Applications in Plant Abiotic Stress Tolerance publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in salicylic acid applications in plant abiotic stress tolerance across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Reactive oxygen species (ROS): Highly reactive molecules generated under stress that can damage cellular components but also serve as signalling agents.

Phenylalanine ammonia-lyase (PAL) pathway: The enzymatic route converting phenylalanine into SA and other phenolics, central to SA biosynthesis.

NPR1: A key SA receptor and transcriptional co-activator that regulates defence gene expression in response to stress.

Priming: A treatment that pre-conditions plants with low concentrations of SA to induce a faster and stronger response upon subsequent stress exposure.

References

1. Decoding early stress signaling waves in living plants using nanosensor multiplexing. Nature Communications (2024).
2. Salicylic acid improves chilling tolerance via CsNPR1–CsICE1 interaction in grafted cucumbers. Horticulture Research (2024).
3. Salicylic acid-related ribosomal protein CaSLP improves drought and Pst.DC3000 tolerance in pepper. Molecular Horticulture (2023).
4. Enhancing Wheat Growth and Yield through Salicylic Acid-Mediated Regulation of Gas Exchange, Antioxidant Defense, and Osmoprotection under Salt Stress. Stresses (2023).