Moab, a plant physiologist hailing from the Federal University of Viçosa - Brazil (2022), is currently working as a postdoctoral fellow at the North Carolina State University Crop Physiology Laboratory (Cardoso Lab). His experience spans a diverse range of fields, including plant hydraulics, abiotic stress physiology (specifically responses to drought and high temperature), plant development physiology, as well as proficiency in plant molecular biology with a focus on Proteomics. In addition, Moab has a background in post-harvest physiology, contributing to a comprehensive understanding of plant function at various stages of growth and development.
1
Comprehensive assessment of drought resistance in herbaceous crops: developing a water retention index model.
M. T. ANDRADE¹ , E. J. HAVERROTH¹, L. A. OLIVEIRA 1 , A. A. CARDOSO¹
¹Department of Crop and Soil Sciences, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, 27695, USA;
Efforts to predict drought resistance in trees are extensive, but such indexes are scarce for herbaceous plants. Here we assessed data of embolism resistance, turgor loss point, (TLP), maximum stomatal conductance ( g smax ), residual conductance ( g leaf-res ) and total leaf area from five herbaceous crops: common bean, cowpea, soybean, sunflower and tomato (wild-type and three ABA-mutants: sitiens , notabilis and sp12 ). These traits were used to calculate a water retention index model (WRI) that was tested against the time plants take to reach 50% stem embolism (P 50 ) during drought. We identified significant variations in physiological and hydraulic traits among species. During the dry-down experiment, the time to P 50 ranged from five to 13 days. The WRI aligned significantly with the time to P 50 ( p < 0.01, R 2 = 0.63). We also found that the time to P 50 only displays significant correlation with g smax and g leaf-res , which suggests that avoidance-related traits possess greater importance in the onset of stress in herbaceous plants. Indeed, crops that show a combination of higher g smax and g leaf-res also show reduced time to P 50 . The WRI index has a strong predictive capacity for drought resistance in crops.