Tree post-drought recovery: scenarios, regulatory mechanisms and ways to improve

Abstract

Efficient post-drought recovery of growth and assimilation enables a plant to return to its undisturbed state and functioning. Unlike annual plants, trees suffer not only from the current drought, but also from cumulative impacts of consecutive water stresses which cause adverse legacy effects on survival and performance. This review provides an integrated assessment of ecological, physiological and molecular evidence on the recovery of growth and photosynthesis in trees, with a view to informing the breeding of trees with a better ability to recover from water stress. Suppression of recovery processes can result not only from stress damage but also from a controlled downshift of recovery as part of tree acclimation to water-limited conditions. In the latter case, recovery processes could potentially be activated by turning off the controlling mechanisms, but several obstacles make this unlikely. Tree phenology, and specifically photoperiodic constraints, can limit post-drought recovery of growth and photosynthesis, and targeting these constraints may represent a promising way to breed trees with an enhanced ability to recover post-drought. The mechanisms of photoperiod-dependent regulation of shoot, secondary and root growth and of assimilation processes are reviewed. Finally, the limitations and trade-offs of altering the photoperiodic regulation of growth and assimilation processes are discussed.