Do plants remember drought? Hints towards a drought-memory in grasses

The frequency of extreme drought events is projected to increase under global climate change, causing damage to plants and crop yield despite potential acclimation. We investigated whether grasses remain acclimated to drought even after a harvest and remember early summer drought exposure over a whole vegetation period. For this, we compared the response of Arrhenatherum elatius plants under a second, late, drought (they were pre-exposed to an early drought before), to plants exposed to a single, only late, extreme drought. Surprisingly, the percentage of living biomass after a late drought increased for plants that were exposed to drought earlier in the growing season compared to single-stressed plants, even after...

Categories: Publication; Types: Citation, Journal Citation; Tags: Chlorophyll a fluorescence, Climate warming, Environmental and Experimental Botany, Memory-effect, Phenotypic plasticity, All tags... Recurrent drought stress, Water deficit, Fewer tags