Capabilities for environmental stress perception, signaling, and response of plant species against a broad range of abiotic stressors have a great range of variability.Ultraviolet (UV) radiation is a component of the solar light and it represents something like 8-9 % of the radiation that naturally reaches the Earth (Frederick 1993 ). Depending on its wavelength, UV can be divided into three different ranges: UV-A (315-390 nm), UV-B (280-315 nm), and UV-C (100-280 nm). Among them, UV-A represents approximately 6.3 % of the incoming solar radiation and is the least hazardous part of UV radiation; UV-B, even if represents just 1.5 % of the total spectrum, is of particular interest because it can cause a multiplicity of detrimental effects in plants (Hollósy 2002 ; Jansen and Bornman 2012 ). Between UV radiations, UV-C is the one with the lower wavelength, or rather with the higher associated energy (Katerova et al. 2009 ;Nawkar et al. 2013 ), and it is well known that UV-C has an acute germicidal action on microorganisms in water, on surfaces, and in air (Siddiqui et al. 2011 ). Indeed, it can induce oxidative results and genetic mutations in plants that in turn have strong negative effects on plant morphology, fl owering, pollination, transpiration, and photosynthesis (Murali and Saxe 1984 ;Booij-James et al. 2000 ).The stratospheric ozone layer effi ciently fi lters out most of the detrimental UV radiation shorter than 280 nm but it decreases rapidly at wavelength longer of 280 nm reaching zero at about 330 nm (Hollósy 2002 ;Nawkar et al. 2013 ). Therefore, UV-B is not completely shielded by the ozone layer and the UV-A are virtually unaffected by the ozone layer. Fortunately, UV-C is strongly affected by the ozone layer in the stratosphere, so that the amount of this radiation reaching the Earth's surface, except for high mountains, is extremely low (Häder et al. 2007 ).