Plant growth is fundamentally constrained by water availability, and increasing climate variability is intensifying the frequency and severity of drought events worldwide. This creates an urgent need to understand how plants sense and integrate hydraulic signals to adjust growth in a dynamic environment. While major advances have been made in characterizing molecular responses to water stress, the mechanisms by which plant meristems—stem cell niches that drive organ growth—perceive hydraulic fluctuations and translate them into growth decisions remain poorly understood. This knowledge gap is particularly relevant for the vascular cambium, the largest plant meristem, which controls radial growth and biomass accumulation in shoots and roots and is central to wood formation and long-term carbon storage. The overarching objective of this project is to elucidate how water status is sensed at the cellular level in the cambium and how this information is converted into changes in cell proliferation and tissue differentiation. Specifically, the project aims to (i) generate spatial and temporal maps of cambial growth rate and cell fate under varying water conditions, (ii) identify osmosensing and mechanosensing ion channels that regulate cambial activity, and (iii) uncover molecular regulators whose expression is transcriptionally responsive to water status. By integrating lineage tracing, genome editing, and quantitative tissue analysis, the project establishes a mechanistic framework linking hydraulic cues to meristem behavior.
