Plants and agriculture worldwide are increasingly exposed to periods of insufficient or irregular water, a problem intensified by climate change. Yet, despite its importance, scientists still do not know exactly how plants sense when water becomes scarce and convert that information into growth and survival responses, such as changes in root architecture or the closing of leaf pores. HYDROSENSING tackles this fundamental question by focusing on how plants detect changes in water availability at the cellular level and how this information is translated into the movement of the stress hormone abscisic acid (ABA) from inner vascular tissues to outer target cells in roots and leaves.
The overall objective of HYDROSENSING is to build a mechanistic “blueprint” of plant water sensing, from biophysical changes in cell walls and membranes through hormone synthesis, transport, and perception, up to whole-organ responses such as root branching and stomatal regulation. To achieve this, the consortium combines complementary expertise in genetics, structural biology, biophysics and advanced imaging. The project develops new tools, including next-generation CRISPR libraries that can simultaneously inactivate multiple related genes, cell-type specific genome editing and activation systems, and real-time imaging of water flow and cell wall dynamics at cellular resolution. These approaches are applied first in the model plant Arabidopsis and then extended to crops such as tomato and rice to test how conserved the water-sensing mechanisms are.
The expected impact of HYDROSENSING is twofold. Scientifically, the project will provide the first integrated, experimentally validated model of how plants sense and respond to water stress, revealing key molecular components and design principles that underlie root and shoot adaptation. Societally and economically, this knowledge will deliver new, well-defined targets and tools for breeding and engineering crops that use water more efficiently and maintain yield under fluctuating water conditions. At the same time, the innovative genetic and imaging platforms developed here will form a long-lasting resource for the wider life-science community, enabling researchers and breeders to interrogate complex traits that depend on water transport and signalling in many plant species.
