The current global climate crisis has resulted in long spells of dry weather and a shortage of rainfall, and becomes a serious threat to crop productivity and food supply. Under drought conditions, the salt concentration increases as the moisture content decreases in the soil. Water deficit and salinity inflict osmotic stress on plant cells. Plants are not able to escape from adverse environments, and so respond to such stressful conditions by triggering physiological and cellular responses [1,2,3]. Most prominently, plants close stomatal apertures on the epidermis to limit transpiration and thereby prevent loss of water under osmotic stress conditions. A stomatal aperture is formed by two flanking guard cells that swell or deflate by regulating turgor pressure through ionic fluxes via ion channels anchored in the plasma membrane [4].

Under osmotic stress conditions, plants biosynthesize and accumulate abscisic acid (ABA), a sesquiterpenoid hormone [5]. Most importantly, ABA functions as a chemical messenger that induces numerous genes whose products are crucial for stomatal closure and the accumulation of osmoprotectants [6,7,8]. A previous transcriptomic study showed that more than half of the genes regulated by ABA treatment are also induced under drought or salinity conditions [9]. Likewise, ABA deficiency impairs osmotic stress regulation of gene expression [10]. Thus, it appears that osmotic stress-induced expression of the responsive genes is entirely dependent on ABA. Because plants encounter not only osmotic stress but also abnormal temperatures (heat and cold) and biotic stresses (pathogens and insects) in nature, ABA signaling is integrated with other ABA-independent signaling pathways [11,12].

ABA is mainly biosynthesized in vascular tissues and transported to sites of action, such as guard cells [13,14]. In guard cells, ABA molecules are perceived by receptors in the nucleus and cytosol, activating the sucrose non-fermenting 1-related protein kinase 2 (SnRK2) family of protein kinases [15,16]. In the nucleus, SnRK2s phosphorylate a number of transcription factors that activate transcription of the ABA-responsive genes whose products are implicated in stress responses and tolerance. Inversely, the clade A type 2C protein phosphatases (PP2Cs) counteract SnRK2s by physical interaction, exerting negative regulation of ABA signaling [17]. Under osmotic stress conditions, PP2Cs bind to ABA receptors to capture ABA, releasing and activating the SnRK2s. Thus, PP2Cs function as a switch at the center of the ABA signaling network.

In Arabidopsis, nine protein phosphatases are classified as clade A PP2Cs [18,19,20]. Six of them—ABA insensitive 1 (ABI1), ABI2, ABA hypersensitive germination 1 (AHG1), AHG3/PP2CA, hypersensitive to ABA1 (HAB1), and HAB2—are involved in ABA signaling in the osmotic stress response. The remaining three members, highly ABA-induced 1 (HAI1), PP2C1/HAI2, and HAI3, affected ABA-independent low water potential phenotypes, such as enhanced accumulation of osmoprotectants and suppression of the expression of abiotic stress-associated genes encoding dehydrins and late embryogenesis abundant proteins (LEAs) [21]. ABI1 and ABI2 are main components of ABA signaling under abiotic stresses and in developmental processes [22,23]. The dominant ABA response mutants of Arabidopsis, abi1 and abi2, were originally isolated on the basis of their ABA insensitivity reflected in reduced seed dormancy and in symptoms of withering [24]. However, it was subsequently found that all of the knockout mutants of PP2C genes exhibited significant ABA hypersensitivity, indicating that they are negative regulators of ABA signaling. Recessive hab1-1 mutants also showed enhanced ABA-responsive gene expression, increased ABA-mediated stomatal closure, and ABA-hypersensitivity in seed germination, indicating that HAB1 also negatively regulates ABA signaling [25,26].

ABA also plays pivotal roles in various physiological processes during the plant life cycle, including seed dormancy, germination, lateral root formation, light signaling convergence, and control of flowering time [5,7,12]. These functions of ABA are related to Ca²⁺ influx, the production of reactive oxygen species such as H₂O₂, ion transport, and electrical signaling [11,12,27]. During these processes, ABA signaling interacts antagonistically or synergistically with other hormonal signaling pathways mediated by auxin, cytokinin, ethylene, and jasmonates [7]. Thus, excess ABA impairs developmental processes such as senescence, as well as pollen fertility, and also leads to seed dormancy and susceptibility to diseases [28].