The duration of ethanol-induced high-salinity stress tolerance in Arabidopsis thaliana.

High-salinity stress affects plant growth and crop yield, so the development of techniques to enhance plant tolerance to such stress is important. Recently, we revealed that ethanol enhances high-salinity stress tolerance in Arabidopsis thaliana and rice by detoxifying Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS). However, we did not investigate how long salt stress tolerance was maintained following treatment with ethanol. Therefore, we herein analyzed survival rates and expression levels of AtZAT12, which is a transcriptional factor of ROS detoxification enzymes, under different conditions in Arabidopsis. Our results showed that ethanol-mediated high-salinity stress tolerance was lost after a 24 h break in ethanol treatment in ~ 1-week-old plants. Although ethanol enhanced salt stress tolerance, high concentrations of ethanol negatively affected plant growth. Thus, these data support the idea that adjustments of the frequency and amount of ethanol application to plants is useful to enhance salt stress tolerance without growth inhibition in the agricultural field.