Recent Advances and Future Prospects on Practical Use of Salicylic Acid - Salicylic Acid: Plant Growth and Development - page 368

overall progress of research on chemical regulated stress responsive genes and
their products reflect their central role in plant growth and development under
stress conditions. The mechanisms, by which the plants maintain their physiology
and development under abiotic stress using different chemical signals at different
times and in response to different stress conditions, and cross talk between each of
them, still remained to be fully understood (Toteja and Sopory 2008 ).
Some research on horticultural uses of MeJA has focused on pre-harvest or
post-harvest treatments to protect against microbial development on harvest tis-
sues. As biological control becomes more important and useful in horticultural
crop production the use of jasmonates-induced defenses may provide valuable
augmentation of integrated pest management strategies. Jasmonates have a crucial
role in protecting ornamental and food crops from post-harvest disorders and
diseases. Jasmonates may also enhance plant quality or to be used in propagation.
Jasmonates can alter physiological processes in plants, to make plants more
valuable for humans (Popova 2012 ).
NO as a signaling molecule in all living organisms from mammals dawn to
bacteria and plant suggests that it could be one of the most widespread biological
messengers in all the living species (Torreilles 2001 ). The most important chal-
lenge is to gain donors which increase stability and longer half-life, with controlled
NO release rates and donors exhibiting high tissues and cells specificity. The
relations between NO, SA and ET must be better clarified in the future. In order to
supply evidence for long distance transmission between different cells and
neighbor tissues, further experiments should be done in whole plants (Palavan-
Ursal and Arisan 2009 ; Popova and Tuan 2010 ).
Based upon the work reviewed by Yang et al. ( 2009 ) we can be reasonably sure
that global climate changes will have an impact on VOCs emission and their
ecological function, but our knowledge about the details is still limited. Although
only a few studies address these effects, the current ecological role of VOCs
remains a significant challenge.
A major challenge for current biology is to integrate research approaches that
address different levels of biological organization, from molecular to ecological
systems (Zheng and Dicke 2008 ). Interplant communication is a research topic that
properly suits the practice of interdisciplinary cooperation.
Many of the future questions concerning the very attractive field of interplant
communication were summarized by Campos et al. ( 2008 ). According to the
authors statement the future scope of interplant communication will open new
perspectives applied to pest and disease control in plants. Volatile mixtures
directly sprayed on plants against herbivores and pathogens, and the development
of plants that are more sensitive to defence inducers are some of the possibilities.
Several studies have shown that it is indeed possible both to reduce herbivory and
to enhance natural enemy attraction simultaneously. If such effects can be trans-
lated into increased and more stable yields in important crops, this strategy might
be explored by the plant breeding industry and eventually become available to
plant growers in the form of resistant cultivars. There are, however, ecological
challenges

associated with this approach, and the modified plant volatile