Phenotypic and Developmental Plasticity in Plants

Abstract

Plants have a remarkable ability to alter their development in response to a multitude of environmental cues or stressors. This phenotypic plasticity allows them to continually adapt to their local environment, a necessity for plants as immobile, sessile organisms. A host of environmental cues can be interpreted by plants, including light, temperature, water, and nutrient levels, and these inputs are integrated and translated into a range of developmental outputs from shoot elongation, regulation of root gravitropism, altered flowering time, timing of germination, and overall plant yield. Plasticity enables growth optimisation for a plant's local environment, allows expansion of a species' range into heterogeneous habitats, and may provide an advantage as the changing climate affects growth conditions around the globe. Studies in the model organism Arabidopsis thaliana , as well as in economically important crop plants like tomato and wheat, are helping to more thoroughly define molecular mechanisms for plastic growth responses. Moving forward, studies of growth and plasticity of plants under multiple, integrated stress conditions will help expand our knowledge and abilities to grow crops in a changing climate and feed our ever‐expanding population. Key Concepts Phenotypic plasticity is the ability of a single genotype to produce a range of phenotypes in response to different environmental conditions. The type and degree of a plant's developmental plasticity will help determine future success of individuals and species in changing climates or altered habitats. Multiple environmental signals are integrated to regulate plant growth, development, and yield. Developmental plasticity comes from the meristem, which continuously produces organs throughout the plant's life cycle. Environmental cues can lead to changes in a plant's gene expression and protein abundance, phytohormone‐responsive signalling, and also epigenetic modifications to the plant's genome. Natural genetic variation within a plant species can confer variable plasticity of development in response to a single abiotic stressor, causing some varieties of plants to be hardier than others.