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RESEARCH FRONT
Contents Vol 37(2)

Adaptive phenotypic plasticity and plant water use

Adrienne B. Nicotra A B and Amy Davidson A
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A Research School of Biology, College of Medicine, Biology and Environment, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia.

B Corresponding author. Email: adrienne.nicotra@anu.edu.au

Functional Plant Biology 37(2) 117-127 https://doi.org/10.1071/FP09139
Submitted: 5 June 2009  Accepted: 15 December 2009   Published: 3 February 2010

Abstract

The emergence of new techniques in plant science, including molecular and phenomic tools, presents a novel opportunity to re-evaluate the way we examine the phenotype. Our increasing capacity for phenotyping means that not only can we consider increasing numbers of species or varieties, but also that we can effectively quantify the phenotypes of these different genotypes under a range of environmental conditions. The phenotypic plasticity of a given genotype, or the range of phenotypes, that can be expressed dependent upon environment becomes something we can feasibly assess. Of particular importance is phenotypic variation that increases fitness or survival – adaptive phenotypic plasticity. Here, we examine the case of adaptive phenotypic plasticity in plant water use traits and consider how taking an ecological and evolutionary perspective on plasticity in these traits might have relevance for agriculture, horticulture and the management of native and invasive plant species in an era of rapid climate change.

Additional keywords: fitness, G × E interaction, phenomics, phenotyping, water use efficiency, WUE.


Acknowledgements

This paper was presented at the symposium ‘Phenotypic Plasticity’ in the Age of the ‘Omics’ supported by the ARC/NZ Network for Vegetation Function (Working Group 59) and run in conjunction with the 1st International Plant Phenomics Symposium. We thank the other participants in the Phenotypic Plasticity working group for productive discussions on this topic and two anonymous reviewers for thoughtful comments on an earlier draft.


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