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Functional Plant Biology Functional Plant Biology Society
Plant function and evolutionary biology
REVIEW (Open Access)

Seeing is believing: what visualising bubbles in the xylem has revealed about plant hydraulic function

Amanda A. Cardoso https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7078-6246 A * , Cade N. Kane B , Ian M. Rimer B and Scott A. M. McAdam B
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A Department of Crop and Soil Sciences, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695, USA.

B Purdue Center for Plant Biology, Department of Botany and Plant Pathology, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA.

* Correspondence to: aavilac@ncsu.edu

Handling Editor: Sergey Shabala

Functional Plant Biology 49(9) 759-772 https://doi.org/10.1071/FP21326
Submitted: 8 November 2021  Accepted: 29 May 2022   Published: 20 June 2022

© 2022 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND)

Abstract

Maintaining water transport in the xylem is critical for vascular plants to grow and survive. The drought-induced accumulation of embolism, when gas enters xylem conduits, causes declines in hydraulic conductance (K) and is ultimately lethal. Several methods can be used to estimate the degree of embolism in xylem, from measuring K in tissues to directly visualising embolism in conduits. One method allowing a direct quantification of embolised xylem area is the optical vulnerability (OV) technique. This method has been used across different organs and has a high spatial and temporal resolution. Here, we review studies using the OV technique, discuss the main advantages and disadvantages of this method, and summarise key advances arising from its use. Vulnerability curves generated by the OV method are regularly comparable to other methods, including the centrifuge and X-ray microtomography. A major advantage of the OV technique over other methods is that it can be simultaneously used to determine in situ embolism formation in leaves, stems and roots, in species spanning the phylogeny of land plants. The OV method has been used to experimentally investigate the spreading of embolism through xylem networks, associate embolism with downstream tissue death, and observe embolism formation in the field.

Keywords: cavitation, drought, embolism, imaging methods, optical vulnerability, plant hydraulics, vascular plants, xylem network.


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