Climate change is aggravating the impact of droughts —one of the factors that only affect plant physiology— on all plant ecosystems worldwide.
Climate change is aggravating the impact of droughts —one of the factors that only affect plant physiology— on all plant ecosystems worldwide. Although new tools have been developed to detect and assess drought stress in plants —transcriptomic or metabolomic technologies, etc.— they are still difficult to apply in natural ecosystems, especially in remote areas and developing countries.
Now, a study published in the journal Trends in Plant Science presents a set of techniques that enable researchers to detect and monitor drought stress in plants in a cheap, easy and quick way. The authors of the study are the experts Sergi Munné-Bosch and Sabina Villadangos, from the Faculty of Biology and the Institute for Research on Biodiversity (IRBio) of the University of Barcelona.
Fighting the Impact of Drought on Plants
The techniques available to detect and monitor the effects of drought stress in plants range from very simple and inexpensive measures (growth or relative water content analysis) to more complex and expensive approaches (omics technologies).
UB professor Sergi Munné-Bosch, professor in the Department of Evolutionary Biology, Ecology and Environmental Sciences, explains that these innovative technologies "have provided new opportunities to detect and monitor drought stress, but their cost generates inequalities around the world".
Read more at University of Barcelona
Photo Credit: Couleur via Pixabay
