| dc.description.abstract | You may have noticed that giving your houseplants too much water is harmful to them. It limits their
ability to take up oxygen from the air, which causes them to suffocate. The symptoms are that their
leaves will hang down and decay of the roots. Excessive watering in the form of floods can destroy
crops in the same way that it can hurt your houseplant. Floods have major consequences for the
quantity and quality of agricultural food production. According to the Food and Agriculture
Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), floods contributed to 65% of crop damage and loss induced
by natural disasters between 2006 and 2016. Heavy rainfalls, causing severe floods, are more likely to
happen in the future due to the impacts of climate change. Our current and future food supply is
seriously threatened by the impacts of floods. Therefore, we must develop innovative agricultural
technologies to combat crop yield loss caused by water stress.
One area of research that can help with this goal is the development of new varieties of crops that are
more resistant to long-term floods. When plants experience floods, they develop all kinds of
adaptations that help them to survive. For example, plants develop new organs that help them prevent
suffocation. Understanding how plants perceive flooding stress and how this perception results in the
development of these adaptations is necessary knowledge to develop flood-resistant crops. For
example, this knowledge would allow opportunities to arise for future researchers to develop new
crops that respond faster and more intensely to floods.
One mechanism that plants use to become aware of their surroundings is by determining the status of
their cell walls. It uses the cell wall as a sensing tool to detect harmful growth conditions, such as hot
and cold temperatures and drought conditions. Thanks to these mechanisms, plants can respond
quickly to these stresses, allowing them to survive these harmful conditions. Although the cell wall
status plays a significant role in the perception of several damaging growth conditions, its role during
flooding stress is hardly investigated. Therefore, we asked the question: “Are cell walls also involved in
the perception of flooding stress in plants?”
To find an answer to this question, we searched the literature for potential cell wall sensing mechanisms
that are active during floods. Here, we merged the expertise of two distinct research fields by
combining the knowledge of (1) plant mechanisms and adaptations during floods and (2) plant cell wall
sensing mechanisms. In this review, we concluded that there is enough evidence to believe thatsensing
the cell wall status is needed for plants to undergo adaptations that help them plants to survive floods.
The most prominent role is reserved for the cell wall component, pectin. We believe that during floods,
the pectin changes in form. Consequently, we believe that this is perceived by the plant, and they
undergo adaptions that protect them against floods. With this report, we contributed to the field of
science by providing credible theories of potential explanations of how plants trigger adaptations
during floods, which eventually contributes to the efforts to limit food loss caused by floods. | |
