Combined heat and water stress leads to local xylem failure and tissue damage in pyrethrum flowers.

Abstract

Flowers are critical for angiosperm reproduction and the production of food, fibre and pharmaceuticals, yet for unknown reasons they appear particularly sensitive to combined heat and drought stress. A possible explanation for this may be the co-occurrence of leaky cuticles in flower petals and a vascular system that has a low capacity to supply water and is prone to failure under water stress. These characteristics may render reproductive structures more susceptible than leaves to run-away cavitation - an uncontrolled feedback cycle between rising water stress and declining water transport efficiency that can rapidly lead to lethal tissue desiccation. We provide modelling and empirical evidence to demonstrate that flower damage in the perennial crop pyrethrum (Tanacetum cinerariifolium), in the form of irreversible desiccation, corresponds with run-away cavitation in the flowering stem after a combination of heat and water stress. We show that tissue damage is linked to greater evaporative demand during high temperatures rather than direct thermal stress. High floral transpiration dramatically reduced the soil water deficit at which run-away cavitation was triggered in pyrethrum flowering stems. Identifying run-away cavitation as a mechanism leading to heat damage and reproductive losses in pyrethrum provides different avenues for process-based modelling to understand the impact of climate change on cultivated and natural plant systems. This framework allows future investigation of the relative susceptibility of diverse plant species to reproductive failure under hot and dry conditions.