How air gaps in soils alter the distribution of root water and hormones fluxes, thereby blocking root lateral branching
(2023) EGU General Assembly 2023 — Location: Vienna (23.April.2023)
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- Abstract
- Plant roots exhibit plasticity in their branching patterns to forage efficiently for heterogeneously distributed resources, such as soil water. The xerobranching response represses lateral root formation when roots lose contact with water (e.g. in “air gaps”), and provides an experimental model to study root adaptive responses to transient water stress. To discover the mechanistic basis of xerobranching, soil- and agar-based xerobranching bioassays were developed. As levels of the abiotic stress signal abscisic acid (ABA) increase in root tips during transient water stress, we observed that tomato, maize and Arabidopsis mutants deficient in ABA are disrupted in xerobranching response. Using novel ABA biosensors and mutants, we showed that when reaching an air gap, it takes about half a day for ABA originating from phloem tissues to radially travel through the unloading zone and accumulate in epidermal tissues.
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Citations
Couvreur, V., Mehra, P., Pandey, B., Draye, X., & Bennett, M. (2023). How air gaps in soils alter the distribution of root water and hormones fluxes, thereby blocking root lateral branching. EGU General Assembly 2023. Published. EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna. https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-9384