Award details

Adaptive responses of plant root and shoot systems to environmental stress

Reference	BBS/E/C/00803795
Principal Investigator / Supervisor	Dr Michael Jackson
Co-Investigators / Co-Supervisors
Institution	Rothamsted Research
Department	Rothamsted Research Department
Funding type	Research
Value (£)	268,734
Status	Completed
Type	Institute Project
Start date	01/04/1997
End date	31/03/1999
Duration	24 months

Abstract

The aim is to assess and understand physiological and biochemical repsonses of plant root systems to environment and their role in stress adaption by the whole plant. The work emphasizes stresses caused by impaired aeration or water shortage. The principal aspects are 1) impact of root stress on hormome transport from roots to shoots in relation to the regulation of plant water relationships and 2) significance of soil flooding and other factors on the ability of willow to absorb pollutants draining from arable farm land. Root to shoot communication studies will concentrate on hormone fluxes in the transpiration stream and an aassessment of their intensity and effectiveness in regulating transpiration through stomatal closure and leaf epinastic curvature. The approach emphasises the plant as a whole organism and adopts techniques for studying plant water relationships, hormone levels by immunoassay and mass spectrometry, nutrient uptake and molecular biology as appropriate. The objective is to characterize the strong stomata-closing activity of transpiration fluid from tomato and assess its role in the rapid stomatal response given by tomato plants to soil flooding. In willow the potential for atrazine to interfere with nitrate uptake will be examinded together with the ability of willow to remove this herbicide from the root environment. Confirmation that willow can enhance nitrate loss from the rooting medium by means other than nitrate uptake and nitrogen retention will be sought. In hypoxic maize roots, studies with a range of antibody probes to cell wall fragments and with conventional light electron and confocal microscopy will seek markers for early stages of programmmed cell death which lead to aerenchyma formation. Studies with Potamogeton will extend information on the permenance of its remarkable anaerobic tolerence in plants by testing effects of light and aerobic pre-treatments. This may lead to identifying lolerant and intoerant organs or tissues with which to make biochemical comparisons using non- destructive NMR and ethanol/acetaldehyde efflux measured by laser photoacoustics at Nijmegen.

Summary

unavailable

Committee	Closed Committee - Plant & Microbial Sciences (PMS)
Research Topics	X – not assigned to a current Research Topic
Research Priority	X – Research Priority information not available
Research Initiative	X - not in an Initiative
Funding Scheme	X – not Funded via a specific Funding Scheme

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