Detecting the impact of drought on plants with user-friendly and inexpensive techniques

Read the full story from the University of Barcelona.

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.