Engineering the Super Plants of Tomorrow: The Key Lies in Circadian Rhythms

Recent research reveals that plants employ their internal circadian rhythms to adapt to fluctuations in water availability and salt levels, presenting a novel strategy for developing crops that can withstand drought conditions.

Climate change is currently impacting agricultural productivity and could eventually pose a considerable risk to global food security. Developing crops that are more resilient, capable of withstanding conditions such as drought or elevated soil salinity, is becoming an urgent need.

A new study from the Keck School of Medicine of USC, funded in part by the National Institutes of Health, reveals details about how plants regulate their responses to stress that may prove crucial to those efforts. Researchers found that plants use their circadian clocks to respond to changes in external water and salt levels throughout the day. That same circuitry—an elegant feedback loop controlled by a protein known as ABF3—also helps plants adapt to extreme conditions such as drought. The results were recently published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.