Plant stress sensors

You know, every once in a while you find somebody who gives you hope. And I found hope in Dr. Ron Mittler, a plant scientist at University of Missouri. David Sparks, AG Information Network. As plants experience multiple stressors from heat, drought and flooding because of extreme weather events, Dr. Miller and his team recently discovered a new way of measuring whether they are stressed out. Plants can talk to us. Speaker2: That's a big statement. If we know their language, yes, maybe we can talk to them, read them at least. Speaker1: But they do tell us stuff regarding stressors from heat, drought, flooding, etc. and they put out a message. Speaker2: Yeah, so we've been working on this for many years now and initially it was discovered already before us, of course that the level of reactive oxygen species is going up if the organism be the plant is stressed, and that is a type of a general signal for stress. So we developed methods that enable us to image those reactive oxygen species essentially in whole plants growing in soil. And moreover, we could actually using this method, we can image and make movies. Speaker1: Having gathered this information, Dr. Miller and his team learned that when a plant gets stressed, it can develop biological defenses to fight that stress. So imagine if you could turn on a plant defense system for drought related stress and prepare the plant before the drought arrives.