Recovery and Memory of Plants during Recurrent Stresses

A special issue of Plants (ISSN 2223-7747). This special issue belongs to the section "Plant Response to Abiotic Stress and Climate Change".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 June 2021) | Viewed by 12328

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Univ Montpellier, CIRAD, INRAE, Montpellier SupAgro, AGAP, 34398 Montpellier, France
Interests: abiotic stresses; phenotyping; developmental biology; recurrent stresses; stress memory; plant plasticity

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Guest Editor
NORMANDIE UNIV, UNICAEN, INRAE, 950 EVA, 14000 Caen, France
Interests: stress memory; yield; seed quality; high temperature; plant ecophysiology; modelling
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Changing climate strongly affects plant performance, which not only impacts the spatial distribution of natural species but also crop production in terms of quantity and quality. Ongoing and projected climate disruption highlight an increased frequency of extreme weather events, which also affect the spread of biotic stresses, thus leading to environmental instability that the plant must face to survive and reproduce. Although the stress responses to a wide range of environmental cues are well understood, they need to be deciphered from the perspective of the plant’s ability to respond to recurrent stressful conditions to capture responses to realistic climatic features. In contrast to long-lasting stressing events, recurrent stresses trigger different responses. The overall magnitude of the plant response to the succession of stress events separated by non-stress events may not match the additional individual responses to each event. Plant responses to stress events might be alleviated if they were previously challenged by a previous similar stress through both a recovery effect (partial, complete, compensatory, and even, in a few cases, over-compensatory recovery upon the return to favorable conditions) and/or a priming effect (i.e., the ability to develop an earlier, more rapid, intense, and sensitive response when the second stress occurs). Stress recovery and/or memory are not obligate processes, which creates the question of the environmental or plant characteristics cues that are triggered or prevented by the event.

This Special Issue tackles the challenge of disentangling the range of responses to recurrent stresses to shed some light on plant memory leading to stress acclimation. The Issue will accept reviews as well as full or short research papers from a broad scope of interdisciplinary research on plant responses to recurrent stresses ranging from molecular to growth, development and final performance, as well as physiological processes.

Particularly welcome are research papers on the following topics:

  • Evidence or absence of plant memory when plants are subjected to recurrent stresses;
  • Disentangling crop memory stress memory from further developmental adjustments and strategies;
  • Plant acclimation to biotic or abiotic stresses at the crop cycle level and/or across generations;
  • Plant recovery after a period of stress;
  • Benefits of stress priming not only at the plant cycle level (i.e., somatic memory) but also across generations (i.e., inter/transgenerational memory).

Dr. Christine Granier
Dr. Sophie Brunel-Muguet
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Keywords

  • stress memory
  • recurrent stresses
  • stress recovery
  • multi-scale plasticity
  • crops
  • model plants

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

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11 pages, 2123 KiB  
Article
Transgenerational Effects of Maternal Water Condition on the Growth, C:N Stoichiometry and Seed Characteristics of the Desert Annual Atriplex aucheri
by Li Jiang, Zhibin Wen, Yunling Zhang, Zhenyong Zhao, Mohsin Tanveer, Changyan Tian and Lei Wang
Plants 2021, 10(11), 2362; https://doi.org/10.3390/plants10112362 - 2 Nov 2021
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1376
Abstract
Water conditions directly affect plant growth and thus modify reproduction allocation. However, little is known about the transgenerational effects of water conditions on xerophytes. The desert annual Atriplex aucheri produces three types of seeds (A: dormant, ebracteate black seeds; B: dormant, bracteolate black [...] Read more.
Water conditions directly affect plant growth and thus modify reproduction allocation. However, little is known about the transgenerational effects of water conditions on xerophytes. The desert annual Atriplex aucheri produces three types of seeds (A: dormant, ebracteate black seeds; B: dormant, bracteolate black seeds; C: non-dormant, bracteolate brown seeds) on a single plant. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of low/high water treatment (thereafter progeny water treatment) on aboveground biomass, C:N stoichiometry, and offspring seed characteristics of A. aucheri grown from brown seeds whose mother plants were under low/high water treatment (thereafter maternal water treatment). Progeny water only affected shoot dry weight and seed allocation of type A. Under low progeny water treatment, plants from parents with low maternal water treatment had the lowest biomass. Maternal water did not significantly influence the C and N content, however high maternal water increased the C:N ratio. Maternal water treatment did not significantly affect seed number. However, plants under low maternal and progeny water treatments had the lowest weight for type B seeds. When progeny plants were under low water treatment, seed allocation of type A, type B, and total seed allocation of plants under high maternal water were significantly lower than those of plants under low maternal water. These results indicate that water conditions during the maternal generation can dramatically contribute to progeny seed variation, but the transgenerational effects depend on the water conditions of progeny plants. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recovery and Memory of Plants during Recurrent Stresses)
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18 pages, 5590 KiB  
Article
Defense Priming in Nicotiana tabacum Accelerates and Amplifies ‘New’ C/N Fluxes in Key Amino Acid Biosynthetic Pathways
by Nils Hanik, Marcel Best, Michael J. Schueller, Ryan Tappero and Richard A. Ferrieri
Plants 2020, 9(7), 851; https://doi.org/10.3390/plants9070851 - 6 Jul 2020
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 3755
Abstract
In the struggle to survive herbivory by leaf-feeding insects, plants employ multiple strategies to defend themselves. One mechanism by which plants increase resistance is by intensifying their responsiveness in the production of certain defense agents to create a rapid response. Known as defense [...] Read more.
In the struggle to survive herbivory by leaf-feeding insects, plants employ multiple strategies to defend themselves. One mechanism by which plants increase resistance is by intensifying their responsiveness in the production of certain defense agents to create a rapid response. Known as defense priming, this action can accelerate and amplify responses of metabolic pathways, providing plants with long-lasting resistance, especially when faced with waves of attack. In the work presented, short-lived radiotracers of carbon administered as 11CO2 and nitrogen administered as 13NH3 were applied in Nicotiana tabacum, to examine the temporal changes in ‘new’ C/N utilization in the biosynthesis of key amino acids (AAs). Responses were induced by using topical application of the defense hormone jasmonic acid (JA). After a single treatment, metabolic partitioning of recently fixed carbon (designated ‘new’ carbon and reflected as 11C) increased through the shikimate pathway, giving rise to tyrosine, phenylalanine and tryptophan. Amplification in ‘new’ carbon fluxes preceded changes in the endogenous (12C) pools of these AAs. Testing after serial JA treatments revealed that fluxes of ‘new’ carbon were accelerated, amplified and sustained over time at this higher rate, suggesting a priming effect. Similar results were observed with recently assimilated nitrogen (designated ‘new’ nitrogen reflected as 13N) with its partitioning into serine, glycine and glutamine, which play important roles supporting the shikimate pathway and downstream secondary metabolism. Finally, X-ray fluorescence imaging revealed that levels of the element Mn, an important co-factor for enzyme regulation in the shikimate pathway, increased within JA treated tissues, suggesting a link between plant metal ion regulation and C/N metabolic priming. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recovery and Memory of Plants during Recurrent Stresses)
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Review

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14 pages, 1162 KiB  
Review
Drought Stress Memory at the Plant Cycle Level: A Review
by Cécile Jacques, Christophe Salon, Romain L. Barnard, Vanessa Vernoud and Marion Prudent
Plants 2021, 10(9), 1873; https://doi.org/10.3390/plants10091873 - 10 Sep 2021
Cited by 49 | Viewed by 6594
Abstract
Plants are sessile organisms whose survival depends on their strategy to cope with dynamic, stressful conditions. It is urgent to improve the ability of crops to adapt to recurrent stresses in order to alleviate the negative impacts on their productivity. Although our knowledge [...] Read more.
Plants are sessile organisms whose survival depends on their strategy to cope with dynamic, stressful conditions. It is urgent to improve the ability of crops to adapt to recurrent stresses in order to alleviate the negative impacts on their productivity. Although our knowledge of plant adaptation to drought has been extensively enhanced during the last decades, recent studies have tackled plant responses to recurrent stresses. The present review synthesizes the major findings from studies addressing plant responses to multiple drought events, and demonstrates the ability of plants to memorize drought stress. Stress memory is described as a priming effect allowing a different response to a reiterated stress when compared to a single stress event. Here, by specifically focusing on water stress memory at the plant cycle level, we describe the different underlying processes at the molecular, physiological and morphological levels in crops as well as in the model species Arabidopsis thaliana. Moreover, a conceptual analysis framework is proposed to study drought stress memory. Finally, the essential role of interactions between plants and soil microorganisms is emphasized during reiterated stresses because their plasticity can play a key role in supporting overall plant resilience. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recovery and Memory of Plants during Recurrent Stresses)
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