• Latest
  • Trending
The amazing system plants use to shape their roots and why it could help protect crops from climate change

The amazing system plants use to shape their roots and why it could help protect crops from climate change

January 10, 2023
Certification Crisis: How the Collapse of a Major Organic Certifier Threatens Australia’s $2.6 Billion Export Market

Certification Crisis: How the Collapse of a Major Organic Certifier Threatens Australia’s $2.6 Billion Export Market

August 25, 2025
The Organic Surge: How Gen Z and Millennials Are Driving an $11.7 Billion Produce Revolution

The Organic Surge: How Gen Z and Millennials Are Driving an $11.7 Billion Produce Revolution

August 24, 2025
Beyond the Peel: Why Pineapple Tops the 2025 Clean Fifteen and What It Means for Produce Safety

Beyond the Peel: Why Pineapple Tops the 2025 Clean Fifteen and What It Means for Produce Safety

August 24, 2025
Черновик

Monsoon-Proof Your Plot: 7 Science-Backed Organic Strategies to Outsmart Garden Pests

August 23, 2025
A National Blueprint: How Luxembourg’s School Program is Building a Market for Local Organic Producers

A National Blueprint: How Luxembourg’s School Program is Building a Market for Local Organic Producers

August 23, 2025
The Organic Paradox: Bumper Harvests and Plummeting Demand Test Farm Resilience

The Organic Paradox: Bumper Harvests and Plummeting Demand Test Farm Resilience

August 22, 2025
Cultivating the Next Generation: How Kochi’s School Gardens Are Sowing Seeds of Organic Farming

Cultivating the Next Generation: How Kochi’s School Gardens Are Sowing Seeds of Organic Farming

August 22, 2025
The Robotic Organic Revolution: NeoFarm’s $35M Bet on Automated, Scalable Vegetable Production

The Robotic Organic Revolution: NeoFarm’s $35M Bet on Automated, Scalable Vegetable Production

August 21, 2025
Belgium Pioneers World’s First Large-Scale Hydroponic Leek Farming in Ypres

Belgium Pioneers World’s First Large-Scale Hydroponic Leek Farming in Ypres

August 21, 2025
La Mancha’s Melon Paradox: Premium Quality Meets Disappointing Prices in 2025 Season

La Mancha’s Melon Paradox: Premium Quality Meets Disappointing Prices in 2025 Season

August 20, 2025
Hungary’s Sour Cherry Crisis: Frost Decimates Harvest While Global Demand Soars

Hungary’s Sour Cherry Crisis: Frost Decimates Harvest While Global Demand Soars

August 20, 2025
Hungary’s Plum Production Faces Challenges: Below-Average Harvest Expected in 2025

Hungary’s Plum Production Faces Challenges: Below-Average Harvest Expected in 2025

August 19, 2025
  • Company
Monday, August 25, 2025
Vegetables News
  • NEWS
    Certification Crisis: How the Collapse of a Major Organic Certifier Threatens Australia’s $2.6 Billion Export Market

    Certification Crisis: How the Collapse of a Major Organic Certifier Threatens Australia’s $2.6 Billion Export Market

    The Organic Surge: How Gen Z and Millennials Are Driving an $11.7 Billion Produce Revolution

    The Organic Surge: How Gen Z and Millennials Are Driving an $11.7 Billion Produce Revolution

    Beyond the Peel: Why Pineapple Tops the 2025 Clean Fifteen and What It Means for Produce Safety

    Beyond the Peel: Why Pineapple Tops the 2025 Clean Fifteen and What It Means for Produce Safety

    Черновик

    Monsoon-Proof Your Plot: 7 Science-Backed Organic Strategies to Outsmart Garden Pests

    A National Blueprint: How Luxembourg’s School Program is Building a Market for Local Organic Producers

    A National Blueprint: How Luxembourg’s School Program is Building a Market for Local Organic Producers

    The Organic Paradox: Bumper Harvests and Plummeting Demand Test Farm Resilience

    The Organic Paradox: Bumper Harvests and Plummeting Demand Test Farm Resilience

    Cultivating the Next Generation: How Kochi’s School Gardens Are Sowing Seeds of Organic Farming

    Cultivating the Next Generation: How Kochi’s School Gardens Are Sowing Seeds of Organic Farming

    The Robotic Organic Revolution: NeoFarm’s $35M Bet on Automated, Scalable Vegetable Production

    The Robotic Organic Revolution: NeoFarm’s $35M Bet on Automated, Scalable Vegetable Production

    Belgium Pioneers World’s First Large-Scale Hydroponic Leek Farming in Ypres

    Belgium Pioneers World’s First Large-Scale Hydroponic Leek Farming in Ypres

  • AGROTECHNOLOGY
    • All
    • Climate
    • Crop protection
    • digital (smart)
    • dron
    • Fertilizer
    • Research
    • weed
    Hungary’s Sour Cherry Crisis: Frost Decimates Harvest While Global Demand Soars

    Hungary’s Sour Cherry Crisis: Frost Decimates Harvest While Global Demand Soars

    Cabbage Compound Breaks Down Dental Plaque by 90% – A Game Changer for Oral Health and Agriculture

    Cabbage Compound Breaks Down Dental Plaque by 90% – A Game Changer for Oral Health and Agriculture

    Winter Warriors: The Cold-Hardy Vegetables That Defy Frozen Soil and Keep Growing

    Winter Warriors: The Cold-Hardy Vegetables That Defy Frozen Soil and Keep Growing

    Tula Region Showcases Agricultural Drones at ‘Future Technologies’ Forum: How UAVs Are Revolutionizing Farming

    Tula Region Showcases Agricultural Drones at ‘Future Technologies’ Forum: How UAVs Are Revolutionizing Farming

    Breaking Boundaries: Sakhalin Farmer Successfully Grows Watermelons in Russia’s Far North

    Breaking Boundaries: Sakhalin Farmer Successfully Grows Watermelons in Russia’s Far North

    Frost Wipes Out 95% of Kuban’s Blueberry Crop: A Cautionary Tale of Climate Risks

    Frost Wipes Out 95% of Kuban’s Blueberry Crop: A Cautionary Tale of Climate Risks

    Winter Rapeseed Quality Breakthrough: Moscow Region Sets New Standards in Oilseed Safety

    Winter Rapeseed Quality Breakthrough: Moscow Region Sets New Standards in Oilseed Safety

    Extreme Heat and Food Price Spikes: How Climate Change is Disrupting Global Agriculture and Inflation

    Extreme Heat and Food Price Spikes: How Climate Change is Disrupting Global Agriculture and Inflation

    Early Harvest Success in Altai Krai: Record Yields of Potatoes and Vegetables Signal Strong Season

    Early Harvest Success in Altai Krai: Record Yields of Potatoes and Vegetables Signal Strong Season

  • IRRIGATION
  • SEED PRODUCTION
    • Vegetables
    • Fruit
  • PROCESSING
No Result
View All Result
  • NEWS
    Certification Crisis: How the Collapse of a Major Organic Certifier Threatens Australia’s $2.6 Billion Export Market

    Certification Crisis: How the Collapse of a Major Organic Certifier Threatens Australia’s $2.6 Billion Export Market

    The Organic Surge: How Gen Z and Millennials Are Driving an $11.7 Billion Produce Revolution

    The Organic Surge: How Gen Z and Millennials Are Driving an $11.7 Billion Produce Revolution

    Beyond the Peel: Why Pineapple Tops the 2025 Clean Fifteen and What It Means for Produce Safety

    Beyond the Peel: Why Pineapple Tops the 2025 Clean Fifteen and What It Means for Produce Safety

    Черновик

    Monsoon-Proof Your Plot: 7 Science-Backed Organic Strategies to Outsmart Garden Pests

    A National Blueprint: How Luxembourg’s School Program is Building a Market for Local Organic Producers

    A National Blueprint: How Luxembourg’s School Program is Building a Market for Local Organic Producers

    The Organic Paradox: Bumper Harvests and Plummeting Demand Test Farm Resilience

    The Organic Paradox: Bumper Harvests and Plummeting Demand Test Farm Resilience

    Cultivating the Next Generation: How Kochi’s School Gardens Are Sowing Seeds of Organic Farming

    Cultivating the Next Generation: How Kochi’s School Gardens Are Sowing Seeds of Organic Farming

    The Robotic Organic Revolution: NeoFarm’s $35M Bet on Automated, Scalable Vegetable Production

    The Robotic Organic Revolution: NeoFarm’s $35M Bet on Automated, Scalable Vegetable Production

    Belgium Pioneers World’s First Large-Scale Hydroponic Leek Farming in Ypres

    Belgium Pioneers World’s First Large-Scale Hydroponic Leek Farming in Ypres

  • AGROTECHNOLOGY
    • All
    • Climate
    • Crop protection
    • digital (smart)
    • dron
    • Fertilizer
    • Research
    • weed
    Hungary’s Sour Cherry Crisis: Frost Decimates Harvest While Global Demand Soars

    Hungary’s Sour Cherry Crisis: Frost Decimates Harvest While Global Demand Soars

    Cabbage Compound Breaks Down Dental Plaque by 90% – A Game Changer for Oral Health and Agriculture

    Cabbage Compound Breaks Down Dental Plaque by 90% – A Game Changer for Oral Health and Agriculture

    Winter Warriors: The Cold-Hardy Vegetables That Defy Frozen Soil and Keep Growing

    Winter Warriors: The Cold-Hardy Vegetables That Defy Frozen Soil and Keep Growing

    Tula Region Showcases Agricultural Drones at ‘Future Technologies’ Forum: How UAVs Are Revolutionizing Farming

    Tula Region Showcases Agricultural Drones at ‘Future Technologies’ Forum: How UAVs Are Revolutionizing Farming

    Breaking Boundaries: Sakhalin Farmer Successfully Grows Watermelons in Russia’s Far North

    Breaking Boundaries: Sakhalin Farmer Successfully Grows Watermelons in Russia’s Far North

    Frost Wipes Out 95% of Kuban’s Blueberry Crop: A Cautionary Tale of Climate Risks

    Frost Wipes Out 95% of Kuban’s Blueberry Crop: A Cautionary Tale of Climate Risks

    Winter Rapeseed Quality Breakthrough: Moscow Region Sets New Standards in Oilseed Safety

    Winter Rapeseed Quality Breakthrough: Moscow Region Sets New Standards in Oilseed Safety

    Extreme Heat and Food Price Spikes: How Climate Change is Disrupting Global Agriculture and Inflation

    Extreme Heat and Food Price Spikes: How Climate Change is Disrupting Global Agriculture and Inflation

    Early Harvest Success in Altai Krai: Record Yields of Potatoes and Vegetables Signal Strong Season

    Early Harvest Success in Altai Krai: Record Yields of Potatoes and Vegetables Signal Strong Season

  • IRRIGATION
  • SEED PRODUCTION
    • Vegetables
    • Fruit
  • PROCESSING
No Result
View All Result
Vegetables News
Home AGROTECHNOLOGY Climate

The amazing system plants use to shape their roots and why it could help protect crops from climate change

by Mariya Polyakova
January 10, 2023
in Climate
0
The amazing system plants use to shape their roots and why it could help protect crops from climate change

https://phys.org

Plants have colonised the vast majority of the Earth’s surface. So what is the key to their success?

People often think of plants as simple, senseless life forms. They may live rooted in one place, but the more scientists learn about plants, the more complex and responsive we realise they are. They are excellent at adapting to local conditions. Plants are specialists, making the most of what is close by to where they germinate.

Learning about the intricacies of plant life is about more than inspiring wonder in people though. Studying plants is also about making sure we can still grow crops in the future as climate change makes our weather increasingly extreme.

Environmental signals shape the growth and development of plants. For example, many plants use day length as the cue to trigger flowering. The hidden half of plants, the roots, also use signs from their surroundings to ensure their shape is optimised to forage for water and nutrients.

Roots protect their plants from stresses such as drought by adapting their shape (branching to increase their surface area, for example) to find more water. But until recently, we didn’t understand how roots sense whether water is available in the surrounding soil.

Water is the most important molecule on Earth. Too much or too little can destroy an ecosystem. The devastating impact of climate change (as recently seen in Europe and east Africa) is making both floods and droughts more common. Since climate change is making rainfall patterns increasingly erratic, learning how plants respond to water shortage is vital for making crops more resilient.

Our team of plant and soil scientists and mathematicians recently discovered how plant roots adapt their shape to maximise water uptake. Roots normally branch horizontally. But they pause branching when they lose contact with water (such as growing through an air-filled gap in the soil) and roots only resume branching once they reconnect with moist soil.

Our team found that plants use a system called hydrosignalling to manage where roots branch in response to water availability in the soil.

Hydrosignalling is the way plants sense where water is, not by measuring moisture levels directly but by sensing other soluble molecules that move with the water within plants. This is only possible because (unlike animal cells) plant cells are connected to one another by small pores.

These pores enable water and small soluble molecules (including hormones) to move together between root cells and tissues. When water is taken up by the plant root, it travels through the outermost epidermal cells.

The outer root cells also contain a hormone that promotes branching called auxin. Water uptake triggers branching by mobilising auxin inwards to inner root tissues. When water is no longer available externally, say when a root grows through an air-filled gap, the root tip still needs water to grow.

So when roots can’t take in water from the soil they have to rely on water from their own veins deep inside the root. This changes the direction of water movement, making it now move outwards, which disrupts the flow of the branching hormone auxin.

The plant also makes an anti-branching hormone called ABA in its root veins. ABA moves with the flow of water too, in the opposite direction to auxin. So when the roots draw down on water from the plants’ veins, the roots are also drawing the anti-branching hormone towards themselves.

ABA stops root branching by closing all the small pores that connect root cells—a bit like blast doors on a ship. This seals off root cells from each other and stops auxin freely moving with water, blocking root branching. This simple system allows plant roots to fine tune their shape to local water conditions. It’s called xerobranching (pronounced zerobranching).

Our study also found that a plant’s roots use a similar system to reduce water loss as its shoots. Leaves stop water loss during drought conditions by closing micro-pores called stomata on their surfaces. Stomata closure is also triggered by the ABA hormone. Similarly, in roots ABA reduces water loss by closing nano-pores called plasmodesmata that link every root cell together.

Roots from tomato, thale cress, maize, wheat and barley all respond to moisture in this way, despite evolving in different soils and climates. For example, tomatoes originated in a South American desert, whereas thale cress comes from central Asian temperate regions. This suggests xerobranching is a common trait in flowering plants, which are over 200 million years younger than non-flowering plants such as ferns.

Roots from ferns, an early evolving land plant species, don’t respond to water in this way. Their roots grow more uniformly. This suggests flowering species are better at adapting to water stress than earlier land plants such as ferns.

Flowering plants can colonise a wider range of ecosystems and environments than non-flowering species. Given the rapid changes in rainfall patterns across the globe, the ability of plants to sense and adapt to a wide range of soil moisture conditions is more important now than ever.

Source: phys.org
Tags: research
Previous Post

In January, Tambov region stores will receive a new crop of Tambov vegetables

Next Post

English farmers turning to cultivating nuts as climate heats

Next Post
English farmers turning to cultivating nuts as climate heats

English farmers turning to cultivating nuts as climate heats

  • Home
  • Privacy Policy
  • Privacy Policy of vegetables.news app

© 2020-2024 VEGETABLES NEWS

No Result
View All Result
  • NEWS
  • AGROTECHNOLOGY
  • IRRIGATION
  • SEED PRODUCTION
    • Vegetables
    • Fruit
  • PROCESSING

© 2020-2024 VEGETABLES NEWS