A non-invasive plant-based probe for continuous monitoring of water stress in real time: a new tool for irrigation scheduling and deeper insight into drought and salinity stress physiology

• Autor(a) principal: Zimmermann,Ulrich
• Data de Publicação: 2013
• Outros Autores: Bitter,Rebecca, Marchiori,Paulo Eduardo Ribeiro, Rüger,Simon, Ehrenberger,Wilhelm, Sukhorukov,Vladimir L., Schüttler,Annika, Ribeiro,Rafael Vasconcelos
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Theoretical and Experimental Plant Physiology
• Texto Completo: http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2197-00252013000100002
• topic: drought; leaf patch clamp pressure probe; osmotic pressure; salinity; water relations; ZIM-probe

The non-invasive, magnetic leaf patch clamp pressure probe (also termed ZIM-probe) allows for the first time to measure continuously turgor pressure changes of plant leaves over long periods of time with high precision and in real time. The probe has become an important tool in plant physiology, molecular biology and ecology, but also in agriculture because the probe is very robust and user-friendly. Growers receive the information about the water status of their plants by wireless telemetry, mobile network and internet on an as-needed basis and can thus adjust very precisely both the timing of irrigation and the quantity of water to apply. Effects of air and leaf temperature, relative humidity, illumination and wind on turgor pressure can be monitored very sensitively both under indoor and outdoor conditions. Even the effects of blue and red light as well as of oscillations of stomata aperture on turgor pressure can be monitored by the probe with high sensitivity. Similarly, water deficit due to increase of the osmotic pressure in the nutrition solutions resulted in significant changes of the probe signals. Multiple probe readings open up new possibilities to resolve (together with other techniques) the mechanisms of short- and long-distance water transport, particularly how plants can cope with water shortage. The applications of the magnetic probe are numerous and one can expect highly interesting developments in plant water relations in the nearest future.