When excessive amounts of water accumulate around roots and aerial parts of plants, submergence stress occurs. To find the integrated mechanisms of tolerance, we used ecotypes of the monocot model plant Brachypodium distachyon to screen for genetic material with contrasting submergence tolerance. For this purpose, we used a set of previously studied drought sensitive/tolerant ecotypes and the k...

Flooding regimes of different depths and durations impose selection pressures for various traits in terrestrial wetland plants. Suites of adaptive traits for different flooding stresses, such as soil waterlogging (short or long duration) and full submergence (short or long duration – shallow or deep), are reviewed. Synergies occur amongst traits for improved internal aeration, and those for ano...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Reducing damage to rice seedlings caused by flash flooding will improve the productivity of rainfed lowland rice in West Africa. Accordingly, the morphological and physiological responses of different forms of rice to complete submergence were examined in field and pot experiments to identify primary causes of damage. METHODS To characterize the physiological responses, se...

Rice plants are much damaged by several days of total submergence. The effect can be a serious problem for rice farmers in the rainfed lowlands of Asia, and runs contrary to a widespread belief amongst plant biologists that rice is highly tolerant of submergence. This article assesses the characteristics of the underwater environment that may damage rice plants, examines various physiological m...

Earlier work on the submergence-tolerant species Rumex palustris revealed that leaf anatomical and morphological changes induced by submergence enhance underwater gas exchange considerably. Here, the hypothesis is tested that these plastic responses are typical properties of submergence-tolerant species. Submergence-induced plasticity in leaf mass area (LMA) and leaf, cell wall and cuticle thic...

Antarctic bryophyte communities presently tolerate physiological extremes in water availability, surviving both desiccation and submergence events. This study investigated the relative ability of three Antarctic moss species to tolerate physiological extremes in water availability and identified physiological, morphological, and biochemical characteristics that assist species performance under ...

Submergence-1 (Sub1), a major quantitative trait locus affecting tolerance to complete submergence in lowland rice (Oryza sativa), contains two or three ethylene response factor (ERF)-like genes whose transcripts are regulated by submergence. In the submergence-intolerant japonica cultivar M202, this locus encodes two ERF genes, Sub1B and Sub1C. In the tolerant near-isogenic line containing the...

We previously characterized the rice (Oryza sativa) Submergence1 (Sub1) locus encoding three ethylene-responsive factor (ERF) transcriptional regulators. Genotypes carrying the Sub1A-1 allele are tolerant of prolonged submergence. To elucidate the mechanism of Sub1A-1-mediated tolerance, we performed transcriptome analyses comparing the temporal submergence response of Sub1A-1-containing tolera...

• The exploitation of natural variation in Arabidopsis thaliana (Arabidopsis) provides a huge potential for the identification of the molecular mechanisms underlying this variation as a result of the availability of a vast array of genetic and genomic resources for this species. Eighty-six Arabidopsis accessions were screened for natural variation in flooding tolerance. This forms the first ste...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Differential responses of closely related species to submergence can provide insight into the evolution and mechanisms of submergence tolerance. Several traits of two wetland species from habitats with contrasting flooding regimes, Rorippa amphibia and Rorippa sylvestris, as well as F(1) hybrid Rorippa × anceps were analysed to unravel mechanisms underlying submergence toler...