text: Every nitrate ion reduced to ammonia produces one OH ion. To maintain a pH balance, the plant must either excrete it into the surrounding medium or neutralize it with organic acids. This results in the medium around the plants roots becoming alkaline when they take up nitrate.
  To maintain ionic balance, every NO taken into the root must be accompanied by either the uptake of a cation or the excretion of an anion. Plants like tomatoes take up metal ions like K, Na, Ca and Mg to exactly match every nitrate taken up and store these as the salts of organic acids like malate and oxalate. Other plants like the soybean balance most of their NO intake with the excretion of OH or HCO.
  Plants that reduce nitrates in the shoots and excrete alkali from their roots need to transport the alkali in an inert form from the shoots to the roots. To achieve this they synthesize malic acid in the leaves from neutral precursors like carbohydrates. The potassium ions brought to the leaves along with the nitrate in the xylem are then sent along with the malate to the roots via the phloem. In the roots, the malate is consumed. When malate is converted back to malic acid prior to use, an OH is released and excreted. (RCOO + HO -> RCOOH +OH) The potassium ions are then recirculated up the xylem with fresh nitrate. Thus the plants avoid having to absorb and store excess salts and also transport the OH.
  Plants like castor reduce a lot of nitrate in the root itself, and excrete the resulting base. Some of the base produced in the shoots is transported to the roots as salts of organic acids while a small amount of the carboxylates are just stored in the shoot itself.