The kinetics of the loss of leaf fresh weight during incubation of barley and rice leaves in 9% or 15% NaCl solutions were biphasic, indicating the existence of a controlling mechanism for water transport. The first rapid phases reached their plateaus within 1 and 2 h in the case of rice and barley leaves, respectively. When barley leaves were fed with sodium fluoride, an inhibitor of phosphatase inhibitor, through their epicotyls for 3 h in darkness, prior to the treatment of NaCl, the biphasic pattern shown during NaCl treatment was disappeared resulting in linear decreases in the relative fresh weights. The results suggest that NaF accelerates salt-induced water efflux from plant cells, possibly by inhibiting the protection mechanism that may act in NaF-untreated leaves. The linear water loss can be explained in terms of phosphorylation of aquaporin by blocking its dephosphorylation in the presence of the phosphatase inhibitor to keep aquaporin in a phosphorylated form. However, the effect of NaF shown in barley leaves were not observed in rice. These results suggest that the regulation of water transport depends on plant species, and the mechanism for the controlling water transport in rice is different from that of barley.