Strawberries under salt stress: ALA and ROS to the rescue

Generating salt-tolerant plants that can cope with increasing soil salinity is a major goal of crop-breeding programs worldwide. Together with genetic approaches, research efforts are focusing on finding chemical modulators of salt tolerance. The exogenous application of 5-aminolevulinic acid (ALA) has been shown to improve salt tolerance in diverse crop species, but its mechanism of action is not properly understood. Wu et al. (2019) report that ALA treatment enhances reactive oxygen species (ROS) production in the roots of salt-stressed strawberry plants. Activation of several key ion transporters downstream to the ROS signal helps to sequester the toxic Na+ ions in the roots and protects the shoots against salt stress.