What is Hydrotropism? Mechanism and Significance

He Hydrotropism Is a growth response of plants to water concentrations. The answer can be positive or negative.

The roots, for example, are positively hydrotropic, as the growth of the roots of the plants occurs towards a higher level of relative humidity. The plant is able to detect this in the root cap and then send signals to the elongated part of the root.

Hydrotropism Image recovered from slideshare.net.

A positive hydrotropism is one in which the organism tends to grow toward moisture, whereas a negative hydrotropism is when the organism grows away from it.

Hydrotropism is a form of tropism (it is a response of an organism to a stimulus) characterized by the growth or response of movement of a cell or an organism to moisture or water.

Mechanism of hydrotropism

A class of plant hormones called auxins coordinate this process of root growth.

The auxins play a key role in doubling the roots of the plants to the water because they cause one side of the root to grow faster than the other and thus the root flexion.

The hydrotropical process is initiated by the root cap capturing the water and sending a signal to the elongated part of the root.

Hydrotropism is difficult to observe in subterranean roots, since the roots are not easily observable.

Water moves easily in the floor And the water content of the soil is constantly changing, so any gradient in soil moisture is not stable.

Why is hydrotropism so important to plants?

What is Hydrotropism?  Mechanism and Significance Roots grow into water

This ability to bend and grow the root to a moisture gradient provided by hydrotropism is essential because plants need water to grow. Water, along with soluble mineral nutrients, is absorbed by the root hairs.

Then, in vascular plants, water and minerals are transported to all parts of a plant through a transport system called xylem.

The second transport system in vascular plants is called phloem. The phloem also carries water, not with soluble minerals, but mostly with soluble organic nutrients in place.

This is of biological importance, as hydrotropism helps to increase the efficiency of the plant in its ecosystem .

Misconceptions about hydrotropism

1- Hydrotropism and root growth in wetlands

Greater root growth in moist soil areas than in dry soil areas is not usually the result of hydrotropics.

Hydrotropism requires a root to fold from a dryer to a moist soil zone. Roots require water to grow so roots that happen to be on moist soil will grow and branch much more than those on dry soil.

2- The absorption of water

The roots can not feel the water inside the pipes intact through the hydrotropism and must break the pipes to get the water.

3- Distance required for water absorption

Roots can not feel water several feet away through hydrotropism and grow toward it.

At best, hydrotropism probably operates at distances of a couple of millimeters.

Hydrotropical studies

Research on hydrotropism has been primarily a laboratory phenomenon for roots grown in moist air rather than soil.

Its ecological importance in roots grown in the soil is not clear because so little hydroponic research has examined the roots grown in the soil.

Recent identification of a mutant plant lacking a hydrotropic response helped to elucidate its role in nature.

Hydrotropism may be important for plants grown in space, where it can allow the roots to be oriented in a microgravity environment.

In fact, this response to plant growth is not easy to study. The experiments, as mentioned, are performed in laboratories and not in the natural environment.

However, more and more is being learned about the complex nature of this process of plant growth.

The most popular plants to study this effect are: pea plant ( Pisum sativum ), Maize plant ( Zea mays ) And thale sour ( Arabidopsis thaliana ).

Another approach to study hydrotropism is to use instruments to alter the direction of the gravity vector received by plants.

What is Hydrotropism?  Mechanism and Significance 1 The direction of growth of the roots is towards the water

Although it is not possible to eliminate the effect of gravity on Earth, there are machines that spin the plants around an axis or in some cases in three dimensions in an attempt to neutralize the effects of gravity, which are called positioning machines random.

In fact, hydrotropism in the roots was most evident when the pea and cucumber plants were grown on one of these machines.

An even more interesting approach to studying is to use the microgravity conditions present during space flight.

The idea is that, in the absence of significant gravitational forces, the predominant gravitational responses of the roots are effectively neglected, so that other root tropics (such as hydrotropism) become more apparent, above gravitationalism. This is a twisting or growing movement of a plant or fungus in response to gravity.

Another obstacle to studying hydrotropism is the difficulty of establishing a system in which there is a reproducible moisture gradient.

The classical methods of the German botanists, also used by the Darwin, included placing the seeds in a hanging cylinder of wet sawdust, which caused the roots to grow first downwards, but then grew back to the wet substrate.

It is noteworthy that one of the lesser known tropisms is hydrotropism, growth directed in response to water or moisture gradients.

Although hydrotropism had been studied in plant roots by 19th century German botanists and by the Darwinians, the existence of this tropism has been questioned until the last years.

These processes simply need to be further studied. Each scientific study will increase understanding of these complex mechanisms.

References

  1. Hershey, D. (1992). "Is hydrotropism all wet?". Science Activities. 29 (2): 20-24.
  2. Kiss, J. (2007). "Where's the water? Hydrotropism in plants". Retrieved from ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.
  3. Team Editor of plant-and-flower-guide. (2012). "Hydrotropism". Retrieved from plant-and-flower-guide.com.
  4. Miyazawa, Y., Yamazaki, T., Moriwaki, T., and Takahashi, J. (2011). "Hydrotropism". Advances in Botanical Research. Retrieved from sciencedirect.com.
  5. Team Editor of Biology Online. (2016). "Hydrotropism". Retrieved from biology-online.org.
  6. Takahashi, N., Yamazaki, Y., Kobayashi, A., Higashitani, A., and Takahashi, H. (2003). "Hydrotropism interacts with gravitropism by degrading amyloplasts in seedling roots of Arabidopsis and radish". Plant Physiol. 132 (2): 805-810.
  7. Dictionary. (2002). "Hydrotropism". Retrieved from dictionary.com.


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