This substance is one of the main ingredients in aspirin and has been used as a universal and inexpensive pain reliever since ancient Egypt. People have been extracting it from willow leaves and bark, but scientists are only now learning that the plants themselves use salicylic acid as a stress reliever.
Plants don't feel pain the way animals do, but they can experience stress in unfavorable conditions, which inhibits their growth. Salicylic acid helps them cope with this condition more easily, so in the process of evolution, plants have learned to produce it independently. The problem is that the plant does not know when it will need this help.
While studying the Arabidopsis plant, American scientists found that the production of the MEcPP molecule increases with increasing stress. It is a "signal" molecule, whose concentration exceeds the norm, triggering the synthesis of salicylic acid. Scientists hope to control this mechanism and learn how to "heal" plants before they become stressed. This, for example, protects crops from adverse climatic conditions, says techcult.ru.
