Salicylic Acid a Multifaceted Hormone for Vegetable Crops-A Review

In recent years salicylic acid has been the focused of intensive research due to its function as an endogenous signal mediating and systemic plant defence responses against pathogens. It has also been found that SA plays a role during the plant response to abiotic stresses such as drought, chilling, heavy metal toxicity, heat, and osmotic stress. In this sense, SA appearstobe, just an ‘effective therapeutic agent’ for plants, SA play a crucial role in the regulation of physiological and biochemical processes during entire lifespan of the plant. Salicylic acid, a naturally occurring plant hormone acting as a important signaling molecule. It plays a vital role in plant growth, ion uptake and transport. Salicylic acidis also involved in endogenous signaling to trigger plant defense against pathogens. This positive effect of SA could be attributed to an increased CO₂ assimilation and photosynthetic rate and increased mineral uptake by the stressed plant under Salicylic acid treatment. The application of salicylic acid, acetylsalicylic acid or other analogues of Salicylic acid, to leaves of corn and soybean accelerated their leaf area and dry mass production, but plant height and root lengthremained unaffected. SA reduced the Na uptake of plants or increased the uptake of N, P, K, Ca, Mg and the other minerals as compared to control treatment under salt stress. The environment is greatly affected by climatic changes resulting in both biotic and abiotic stresses. Stresses occurring at the primary and secondary levels lead to abiotic stresses that consequently affect the yield of crop plants.