Survival strategies adopted by plants during flooding

Abstract

Water is essential for plant growth and development but excessive water adversely affects plant fitness in natural and agricultural ecosystems. This results in restricted gas exchange, low light levels under water and formation of potentially toxic compounds that leads to carbon and energy crisis. Plant respond to it through various submergence survival strategies involving ethylene and gibberellin driven module that control the growth of submerged plant parts. Evidences from genetic and molecular studies suggests that plant tolerance to flooding is commonly governed by key regulatory components encoding transcription factors, protein kinases and upstream components as a result of altered homeostasis in oxygen, ethylene and energy reserves. Further mechanistic understanding of survival strategies at physiological and molecular levels can contribute to identify the potential regulatory network governing survival under flooding to stabilize crop yields in flood prone environments.