Plant Stress Physiology
Stress
Any change in the surrounding environment may
disrupt homeostasis. Environmental modulation of
homeostasis may be defined as biological stress .
The maintenance of internal conditions from the
harms of fluctuation in external enviornment is
called homeostasis.
Thus, it follows that plant stress implies some
adverse effect on the physiology of a plant induced
upon a sudden transition from some optimal
environmental condition where homeostasis is
maintained to some suboptimal condition which
disrupts this initial homeostatic state.
Plant responses toward stresses
• If the stress is moderate and short term, the injury may
be temporary and the plant may recover when the stress
is removed.
• If the stress is severe enough, it may prevent
flowering, seed formation, and induce
senescence that leads to plant death. Such
plants are considered to be susceptible.
• Some plants escape the stress altogether, such as
ephemeral, or short-lived, desert plants.
• Ephemeral plants germinate, grow, and flower very
quickly following seasonal rains. They thus complete
their life cycle during a period of adequate moisture
and form dormant seeds before the onset of the dry
season.
• arctic annuals rapidly complete their life cycle during
the short arctic summer and survive over winter in the
form of seeds.
• Strategies of plants to face the stress
conditions
1. Escaper: completing their life cycle before the
occurrence of stress.
2. Stress Avoider: Achieve through
morphological changes in plants such as reduced
stomatal conductance, decreased leaf area and
increased root/ soot ratio.
• Avoidance mechanisms reduce the impact of a stress,
even though the stress is present in the environment.
3. Stress Tolerant
Many plants have the capacity to tolerate a particular stress and
hence are considered to be stress resistant (Figure 3.30). Stress
resistance requires that the organism exhibit the capacity to
adjust or to acclimate to the stress.
Stress resistance requires that the organism
exhibit the capacity to adjust or to acclimate to
the stress
Acclimation is the process in which an individual
organism adjusts to a change in its enviornment,
Allowing it to maintain performance across a rang of
Enviornmental conditions. Acclimation occurs in a
Short period of time , and within organism’s lifetime.
Adaptation is a process in which
development takes
Place over many generations. It inolves
genetic
Changes as adverse enviornment
persist over several
Generations of a species. It is
henotypic changes and it
Take long time, sometime permanent.
What causes plant stress?
Photosynthesis under stressful environments
• Stressful environments such as salinity, drought, and high
temperature (heat) cause alterations in a wide range of
physiological, biochemical, and molecular processes in plants.
Photosynthesis, the most fundamental and intricate physiological
process in all green plants, is also severely affected in all its phases
by such stresses
• Since the mechanism of photosynthesis involves various
components, including photosynthetic pigments and
photosystems, the electron transport system, and CO2 reduction
pathways, any damage at any level caused by a stress may reduce
the overall photosynthetic capacity of a green plant
• Details of the stress-induced damage and adverse effects on different
types of pigments, photosystems, components of electron transport
system, alterations in the activities of enzymes involved in the
mechanism of photosynthesis, and changes in various gas exchange
characteristics, particularly of agricultural plants, are considered in this
review.
Photosynthetic pigments
present in the photosystems
are believed to be damaged by
stress factors resulting in a
reduced light-absorbing
efficiency of both
photosystems (PSI and PSII) and
hence a reduced
photosynthetic capacity
the Effect of Drought Stress in Plants:
Main effects of heat stress (HS) on plan
t growth,
Adverse effects of salt stress on plant growth.
