Tiny leaks with deadly consequences: implication of minimum conductance to water vapor for plant performance and survival in a hotter and drier world

About the talk

Efficient control of water loss is critical for plant survival under hotter-drought episodes. Under such challenging environmental conditions, the drop in water potential towards critical levels is minimized by the reductions in stomatal aperture. However, even after complete stomatal closure, plants keep losing water to the atmosphere through their hydrophobic protective layers (cuticle and periderm). This residual water loss of different organs (e.g. leaves, stems, and flowers), though often overlooked, has emerged as a key trait explaining the drought-induced mortality of different species. Despite this, the drivers of minimum conductance across species remain poorly understood—particularly how residual water loss interacts with other key hydraulic traits (e.g., water storage capacity and vulnerability to embolism) to influence the time to hydraulic failure. In this talk, I will explore the causes and consequences of variation in minimum conductance in different plant organs, and how this variation influences plant performance and survival under hotter-drought conditions.