A study from the University of Seville analyzes the Doñana drought-resistant carnation and reveals a precise response to water scarcity.
How can a threatened plant keep functioning when water is scarce? The drought-resistant Doñana carnation (Dianthus inoxianus) offers clues about that capacity. Researchers from the University of Seville have studied its response to understand what enables it to face the most extreme conditions for Mediterranean vegetation.
The research combined an analysis of the plant’s functioning with an examination of its gene activity. Experiments were conducted under controlled conditions, allowing examination from both perspectives and exploring how the mechanisms involved coordinate as water becomes limited.
In this article we will explain what the scientists observed and what the discovery contributes to the knowledge of Mediterranean plants. The key is to understand how this carnation responds to water scarcity, without confusing the resistance demonstrated in the experiment with a guarantee of survival in its natural surroundings.
The Doñana drought-resistant carnation
A team of researchers from the University of Seville (US) has demonstrated that a wild carnation endangered native to the Doñana National Park environment presents a notable capacity to cope with drought.
The US has reported in a press release that the study shows that the ‘Dianthus inoxianus’ uses a strategy with which it maintains its main functions stable and performs only a few specific adjustments when drought arrives.
To learn these details, the researchers have cultivated plants under controlled conditions, some with abundant water and others subjected to drought.
The study, published in the scientific journal ‘Current Plant Biology’, has been led by the University of Seville researchers Alba Rodríguez Parra and Francisco Balao, and has delved into both the functioning and the changes that occurred in the activity of the plants’ genes.
The results have shown that the drought-exposed plants maintained relatively stable main characteristics, as they were able to conserve leaf water content and maintain their photosynthetic activity thanks to small adjustments.
This stability is also observed at the molecular level and, of the approximately 23,700 genes studied, only 57 have significantly changed their activity during the drought. The US scientific team has also observed that several of the mechanisms that control gene activity act in a coordinated way during drought.
This suggests that the species’ resistance does not depend on a single response, but on very precise small changes that allow the plant to keep functioning even when water is scarce, according to the US.
The study also helps to understand how some Mediterranean plants can survive prolonged periods of water shortage.
This research, funded through a Knowledge Generation project from the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, has been carried out at the US’s Center for Research, Technology and Innovation, in the Celestino Mutis building.
