Can salt stress-induced physiological responses protect tomato crops from ozone damages in Mediterranean environments?

The main route for ozone entry in plants is through the stomata. Consequently, environmental factors that may expose plants to any stress that will eventually lead to stomatal closure, will also reduce the rate of ozone entry into the plant and will possibly counteract ozone damages. In addition, several abiotic stresses activate the synthesis of antioxidant compounds, which are responsible for neutralizing toxic ozone derivatives. Due to this complex response, it is critical to assess how abiotic stresses and ozone toxicity will interactively affect plant growth and yield, especially in those areas, such as the coastal Mediterranean regions, where these types of stress and ozone exposure typically coexist. In this research we exposed tomato plants to salt stress in presence and absence of ozone to assess how salinity and ozone may interfere in terms of physiological responses and final yield. Plants grown in absence of ozone had a greater total biomass and higher yield compared to those grown in presence of ozone. Nevertheless these differences disappeared upon salinization. The reduced ozone damage in saline environment must be interpreted on relative terms, however, since salinity by itself caused a general inhibition of plant growth and yield. Based on these results, it was concluded that defining environment-specific ozone toxicity thresholds is necessary for developing reliable prediction models and/or assessing environmental safeguard levels.