The phytohormone abscisic acid (ABA) acts in a variety of signaling pathways to regulate adaptive stress responses and development. While ABA signaling pathways have been mostly studied in rice and Arabidopsis, they are less well understood in other species. Wang et al. (on pp. 1760-1769) characterised the role of <i>Protein Phosphatase 2C (PP2C)</i> genes in tomato, which are known key components of plant ABA signalling pathways, and determined that tomato <i>SlPP2C5</i> negatively regulates ABA signaling, specifically impacting on fruit development and ripening onset.