Water is the most basic requirement of land plants. Evolution of plant–water relations has shaped plants over the last 400 million years and continues to be a primary selective force.
Our aim is to create an integrated view of function and evolution in plant–water relations, which will include the processes, traits and gene networks underlying how plants acquire water, transport water, lose water, and control water content/cell turgor.
Specifically, we aim to:
- connect key water-relations traits with plant fitness and survival
- link specific water relations phenotypes to genetic architecture and whole-plant function
- enable the pathway to using water relations properties in a predictive way
- provide the means by which water relations traits may be used as a tool in the future of crop development.
In the long term, we anticipate the discovery of new connections to gene networks, emerging from a multi-scale approach in diverse systems.