Dynamics of moisture diffusion and adsorption in plant cuticles including the role of cellulose

Abstract

Food production must increase significantly to sustain a growing global population. Reducing plant water loss may help achieve this goal and is especially relevant in a time of climate change. The plant cuticle defends leaves against drought, and so understanding water movement through the cuticle could help future proof our crops and better understand native ecology. Here, via mathematical modelling, we identify mechanistic properties of water movement in cuticles. We model water sorption in astomatous isolated cuticles, utilising three separate pathways of cellulose, aqueous pores and lipophilic. The model compares well to data both over time and humidity gradients. Sensitivity analysis shows that the grouping of parameters influencing plant species variations has the largest effect on sorption, those influencing cellulose are very influential, and aqueous pores less so but still relevant. Cellulose plays a significant role in diffusion and adsorption in the cuticle and the cuticle surfaces.

Synergetic and persistent harvesting of electricity and potable water from ambient moisture with biohybrid fibrils

“…29,32,33 Their intrinsic polar and nanoscale features were in favor of capturing atmospheric moisture via adsorption and capillary condensation. 29,31,35 Also, their dissociable groups (e.g., carboxyl and sulfonate groups) were benecial to form hydrated and charged nanochannels for directional ion migration with the presence of electric double layers. 32,33,36 In order to synchronize this electricity-harvesting procedure with an additional water-harvesting process, bio-brils were further engineered into biohybrid brils of MOFs to improve their moisture-adsorption ability in combination with photothermal evaporation under natural sunlight.…”

Kinetically Consistent Data Assimilation for Plant PET Sparse Time Activity Curve Signals

“…The key advance of KC-DA with respect to the state of the art is the possibility of the extraction of a continuous profile of the FD variables along the plant stem based on a realistic dynamic physical model, as shown in Figure 6. The relevance of novel mathematical modeling based on biophysical mechanisms has been recently emphasized (Tredenick and Farquhar, 2021) and models which describe the mechanistic properties of water movement in the different parts of plants became fundamental for the interpretation of measurements using nuclear science approaches, such as PET. Although these models are based on fluid dynamics and are extended with compartmental modeling for exchange rates between different functional compartments in plant tissues (Bühler et al, 2011;Mincke et al, 2021b), they are able to extract only an averaged quantities along small sections of the stem.…”

Materials on Plant Leaf Surfaces are Deliquescent in a Range of Environments

“…The POD of salts is well defined in the literature, though there is less known about the sorption of salt mixtures, and salt and oil mixtures. Plant materials such as the plant cuticle, seeds and cellulose are hygroscopic [10], but generally to a lesser extent than ionic salts. Sorption at high humidity, in terms of weight increase of moisture over the dry weight in cuticles is generally around 8%, cellulose 30%, polar polysaccharides isolated from cuticles 49%, clays (smectite) 21%, while CaCl 2 can sorb 1400% [10,25,[34][35][36][37].…”

“…Gas exchange experiments, stomatal apertures and distribution [5,6], foliar water uptake [7], and foliar-applied agrochemical penetration [8] may be impacted by hygroscopic materials. In the context of foliar-applied agrochemical spray penetration, the effect of additional hygroscopic materials on the surface is significant, including changing the point of deliquescence of the applied salt [9,10], total droplet evaporation time, droplet contact angle and area, and total amount of chemical penetrated [8,11,12]. Ionic substances are often present on plant leaves (especially in saline environments, such as mangroves [7]), in atmospheric particles and in sprinkler irrigation [10,13].…”