A hundred years of figuring out how plants cope with stress
Perera-Castro AV, Flexas J
Climate Adaptation
The wilting tomato leaves you see on a hot afternoon and the drought-stressed oak dropping leaves early are both explained by decades of research this review ties together into one story.
This article looks back at 100 years of a scientific journal to tell the story of how researchers figured out why plants wilt, how they move water from roots to leaves, and how they protect themselves from too much sun. It groups the big discoveries into four themes: surviving tough conditions, moving water through their bodies, breathing in carbon dioxide, and managing light energy without getting damaged. It's essentially a highlight reel of the ideas that built the modern science of how plants interact with their environment.
Key Findings
The review organizes a century of plant physiology research into four core areas: growth/survival under environmental stress, water relations and hydraulics, photosynthetic gas exchange, and photoprotection.
It traces the discipline's historical foundations and identifies landmark papers published in the journal Plant Physiology over 100 years that shaped modern plant ecophysiology.
The authors connect historical milestones to current state-of-the-art understanding, highlighting how these four domains remain interlinked in explaining species-level differences in environmental response.
chevron_right Technical Summary
A century-long review traces how plant scientists learned to measure the way plants handle drought, heat, light, and water stress, charting the key discoveries that built today's field of plant ecophysiology.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
Sprouts of plant ecophysiology along 100 years of plant physiology.
Plant ecophysiology is the discipline within plant physiology that focuses on understanding how physiological processes in relation to environmental changes occur and how such responses differ amon...
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