About this Research Topic
Water scarcity is an alarming threat to food security and is soon estimated to be a widespread issue globally. It is expected that by 2025, over half of the human population will inhabit countries with water shortages. Identifying and understanding traits that can improve crop drought tolerance is essential for developing more drought-tolerant crops and cropping systems.
Plants have evolved a variety of mechanisms to adapt to drought conditions. In recent decades, researchers have identified several traits that might help plants to use acquired water efficiently and tolerate desiccation, as well as a smaller number of traits that may assist soil water acquisition. For instance, root growth often continues under severe drought stress that completely inhibits shoot elongation, which is considered a mechanism of plant adaptation to water-limited conditions. Roots are a primary organ in plants and develop accordingly to the volume and environment available that, therefore, highly affect the plant’s physiological and chemical processes to establish appropriate growth.
Studies have proved that productivity is reduced by lower photosynthetic activity (source). However, it is now evident that source activity is also dependent upon the sink demand. The imbalance of the sink-source relationship results in the upregulation of source photosynthetic activity per unit leaf area, which will, consequently, affect its potential even under favorable conditions.
This Research Topic aims to explore the below questions:
- How do the plant root hairs interact with different soil textures, and what is their effect on the whole-plant hydraulic activity?
- What genes are involved in the root adaptive measures under water stress? Including different soil textures to understand the soil-water-plant relationship.
This topic intends to bring together recent advancements in the root’s architecture, anatomy, and the genetics involved in the interaction of root hairs with soil particles under different soil textures and water stress.
We welcome submissions focused on, but not limited to, the following:
- Genetic mechanisms of root hairs
- Changes in root anatomy toward senescence
- Root architecture
- The hormones cross-talk on the cellular level under root-adaptive measures
- Biochemical changes in rhizosphere soil
- How the source-sink relationship is altered under different soil textures and water stress
Plants have evolved a variety of mechanisms to adapt to drought conditions. In recent decades, researchers have identified several traits that might help plants to use acquired water efficiently and tolerate desiccation, as well as a smaller number of traits that may assist soil water acquisition. For instance, root growth often continues under severe drought stress that completely inhibits shoot elongation, which is considered a mechanism of plant adaptation to water-limited conditions. Roots are a primary organ in plants and develop accordingly to the volume and environment available that, therefore, highly affect the plant’s physiological and chemical processes to establish appropriate growth.
Studies have proved that productivity is reduced by lower photosynthetic activity (source). However, it is now evident that source activity is also dependent upon the sink demand. The imbalance of the sink-source relationship results in the upregulation of source photosynthetic activity per unit leaf area, which will, consequently, affect its potential even under favorable conditions.
This Research Topic aims to explore the below questions:
- How do the plant root hairs interact with different soil textures, and what is their effect on the whole-plant hydraulic activity?
- What genes are involved in the root adaptive measures under water stress? Including different soil textures to understand the soil-water-plant relationship.
This topic intends to bring together recent advancements in the root’s architecture, anatomy, and the genetics involved in the interaction of root hairs with soil particles under different soil textures and water stress.
We welcome submissions focused on, but not limited to, the following:
- Genetic mechanisms of root hairs
- Changes in root anatomy toward senescence
- Root architecture
- The hormones cross-talk on the cellular level under root-adaptive measures
- Biochemical changes in rhizosphere soil
- How the source-sink relationship is altered under different soil textures and water stress
Keywords: water stress, abiotic, soil texture, plant roots, anatomy, senescence, rhizosphere, biochemical change
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
