“…In fact, Si raised the relative leaf water content (RWC) and the stomatal size in severely drought-stressed collards to the same conditions that were found in well-watered plants. Drought-stressed plants usually have lower RWC (Farooq, Wahid, Kobayashi, Fujita, & Basra, 2009;Sampathkumar, Pandians, Jeyakumar, & Manickasundaram, 2013), but addition of Si increased the RWC in drought-stressed maize (Zargar & Agnihotri, 2013), wheat (Gong & Chen, 2012;Pei et al, 2010) and pepper (Lobato et al, 2009) to similar levels of non-stressed plants. The increased RWC shows that Si improved water uptake and retention in drought-stressed collard.…”