Transpiration increases under high temperature stress: potential mechanisms, trade-offs and prospects for crop resilience in a warming world.

W. Sadok,José R. López,Kevin P. Smith

Published 2020 in Plant, Cell and Environment

ABSTRACT

The frequency and intensity of high temperature stress events are expected to increase as climate change intensifies. Concomitantly, an increase in evaporative demand, driven in part by global warming, is also taking place worldwide. Despite this, studies examining high temperature stress impacts on plant productivity seldom consider this interaction to identify traits enhancing yield resilience towards climate change. Further, new evidence documents substantial increases in plant transpiration rate in response to high temperature stress even under arid environments, which raises a trade-off between the need for latent cooling dictated by excessive temperatures and the need for water conservation dictated by increasing evaporative demand. However, the mechanisms behind those responses, and the potential to design the next generation of crops successfully navigating this trade-off, remain poorly investigated. Here, we review potential mechanisms underlying reported increases in transpiration rate under high temperature stress, within the broader context of their impact on water conservation needed for crop drought tolerance. We outline three main contributors to this phenomenon, namely stomatal, cuticular and water viscosity-based mechanisms and we outline research directions aiming at designing new varieties optimized for specific temperature and evaporative demand regimes to enhance crop productivity under a warmer and dryer climate. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

PUBLICATION RECORD

  • Publication year

    2020

  • Venue

    Plant, Cell and Environment

  • Publication date

    2020-12-05

  • Fields of study

    Agricultural and Food Sciences, Medicine, Environmental Science

  • Identifiers
  • External record

    Open on Semantic Scholar

  • Source metadata

    Semantic Scholar, PubMed

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