How plants' roots can protect them from climate change

Malcolm Bennett, professor of plant sciences, and Poonam Mehra, a postdoctoral fellow in biosciences, both at the University of Nottingham in the UK, write about the amazing system that plants use to shape their roots, and why it could help protect crops from the effects of climate change, such as floods and droughts.

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Plants have colonised the vast majority of the earth’s surface. So what is the key to their success?People often think of plants as simple, senseless life forms. They may live rooted in one place, but the more scientists learn about plants, the more complex and responsive we realise they are. They are excellent at adapting to local conditions. Plants are specialists, making the most of what is close by to where they germinate.

Learning about the intricacies of plant life is about more than inspiring wonder in people, though. Studying plants is also about making sure we can still grow crops in the future as climate change makes our weather increasingly extreme.

Environmental signals shape the growth and development of plants. For example, many plants use day length as the cue to trigger flowering. The hidden half of plants, the roots, also use signs from their surroundings to ensure their shape is optimised to search for water and nutrients.

Roots protect their plants from stresses such as drought by adapting their shape branching to increase their surface area, for example) to find more water. But until recently, we didn’t understand how roots sense whether water is available in the surrounding soil.

Water is the most important molecule on Earth. Too much or too little can destroy an ecosystem. The devastating impact of climate change, as seen recently in Europe and East Africa, is making both floods and droughts more common. Since climate change is making rainfall patterns increasingly erratic, learning how plants respond to water shortage is vital for making crops more resilient.

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