Antioxidant defenses in plants: A dated topic of current interest

Plants have been challenged against oxidative stress since their appearance on land [1], and their ability not only to survive but to profitably grow in an ever-changing environment allowed for the conquest of land [2,3]. The evolution of an effective antioxidant defense network (sensu Mittler [4]) has been of key significance for increasing the complexity of land plants [5], in turn allowing for conquest habitats of increasing stress severity [6]. Indeed, current-day land plants are equipped with an arsenal of "primary" and "secondary" antioxidant defenses to finely tune the levels of different reactive oxygen species (ROS) and to effectively acclimate/adapt to a wide array of environmental stressors of different origins [7].