#drought-tolerance

Antarctic endophytes improve drought tolerance in lettuce plants

Antarctic root-endophytes were collected from plants such as Colobanthus quitensis, seen here growing on the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica. Photo credit: Marco Molina Montenegro. Climate change has limited the availability of water for irrigating crops throughout many regions of the world. Indeed, current models of climate change predict that arid and semi-arid zones will be places where…

Deep roots and their functions in ecosystems

Deep roots determine many ecosystem services but remain understudied, due to the challenges involved in the observation and measurement of deep roots. In this paper, Pierret et al. show that root structures and functions differ according to their depth and suggest that deep rooting systems could be more widespread than was previously thought. Drawings of the above- and below-ground extension of…

Brachypodium peroxidase and drought tolerance

The peroxidase (POD) family shows functional diversity. Luo et al. demonstrate that Brachypodium distachyon ecotypes have distinct specific POD isozymes. Brachypodium distachyon. Photo: Harry Rose / Flickr. Two POD genes are closely associated with whole-plant response to drought, which may lead to natural variations of drought tolerance. The role of specific POD genes in differentiating…

Phosphorus and elevated CO2 enhance drought tolerance

Benefits to crop productivity arising from increasing CO2 fertilization may be offset by detrimental effects of global climate change, such as an increasing frequency of drought. Phosphorus ( P ) nutrition plays an important role in crop responses to water stress, but how elevated CO2 (eCO2) and P nutrition interact, especially in legumes, is unclear. This study aimed to elucidate whether P…