Hydraulics encompasses all fluid transport through plants, from uptake in roots to movement through stems and leaves, and plays a crucial role in influencing and regulating growth and responses to environmental stresses. As plants face increasing abiotic and biotic stresses, advancing our understanding of plant hydraulics is essential for unraveling their resilience and capacity to adapt to a changing climate, while also enabling the development of stress-resilient crops and improved water management in agriculture. This special collection seeks quantitative studies on plant hydraulics from a multidisciplinary perspective, spanning molecular, cellular, whole-plant, and ecosystem scales.

 

We welcome submissions on the following topics, but not limited to:

• Recent progress in methods and technologies for measuring and modelling hydraulic processes across scales from cellular to whole-plant levels.
• Structural and functional adaptations of plant vasculature in regulating water transport efficiency and drought tolerance.
• Quantitative studies linking hydraulic function with plant physiology, metabolism, evolution, and adaptation to environmental stresses.
• Quantitative understanding of plant-water interactions.
• Hydraulics in regulating plant development and morphogenesis.
• Impact of abiotic stress (drought, flooding, salinity, temperature, nutrient etc.,) on plant hydraulics and physiology.
• Symplastic and apoplastic pathways in determining plant hydraulic efficiency and their contributions to overall plant function.

 

Submission deadline: 31^st May 2025

Please submit your articles via the Quantitative Plant Biology ScholarOne site and select ‘Plant Hydraulics’ from the special collection dropdown menu. Your paper will go through peer review. Please contact Alison Paskins ([email protected]) if you want to discuss your submission.

 

Accepted articles will be promoted through social media, and we will be offering all authors the opportunity to take part in a webinar dedicated to this special collection (including a presentation for each paper and a Q&A session).

 

Guest Editors: 

• Vesna Bacheva (Cornell U, USA, engineering and plant biomechanics)
• Poonam Mehra (Nottingham U, UK, plant development and biomechanics)
• Priya Ramakrishna (EPFL, Switzerland, plant abiotic stress)
• Yuchen Long (National U Singapore, Singapore, plant biomechanics and hydraulics)