Global climate change and localised human impact, such as waste disposal or fertilizer use, has and will continue to have an effect on the world’s flora, both natural and agricultural. Predicting this effect can be difficult, but it is important. If land managers and farmers know which species will cope well with change, they will be better able to make a decision about the species which will struggle under certain conditions.
If a species is well-researched, it may be possible to look for QTL associated with resistance to heat, drought, flooding, or other abiotic stresses, but of course this does not predict real-world responses reliably and in any case is not an option in all cases. In the lab or greenhouse under controlled conditions, a simple observation experiment can tell you the effects of various conditions on a plant, but again this is not an indication of in situ viability.
Buchner et al. published a method of determining the heat tolerance of plants in the field in this month’s Plant Methods (vol. 9:7). Heat was the only imposed variable in their protocol, so any environmental factors are included in the experiment. The group, from Othmar Buchner’s group at Innsbruck, made their own Heat Tolerance Testing System (HTTS) from a number of pieces of technical equipment, including the customized exposure chambers seen in the image above (Figure 5B in the paper). (more…)
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