Despite appearing to recover, sunflowers retain drought damage
Sunflowers are unable to fully recover from drought, new research has found, contradicting previous findings on the plant's ability to reverse drought-induced failure of water-transporting tissues and revealing new insights into how drought affects plants.
New research indicates that sunflowers struggle to fully recover from the damage caused by drought, contradicting earlier findings about their ability to reverse water-transporting tissue failure. As sunflowers dry out, gas bubble blockages called embolisms can form in their water-transporting tissues. While previous studies suggested that sunflowers could recover through a process called refilling, a new study by Colorado State University, the University of Colorado Boulder, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that these embolisms do not reverse after watering.
The blockages in stems and leaves persist even after the sunflowers appear to recover, preventing the leaves from receiving the water they need for growth and photosynthesis. The study, published in the Journal of Experimental Botany, used microCT scanning to directly observe embolisms in intact sunflower plants, avoiding the false positives that can result from destructive sampling methods.
This new evidence suggests that different plant species may have varying abilities to recover from drought, with some being able to refill embolized tissue and others not.
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