Tolerance of switchgrass to extreme soil moisture stress: Ecological implications

Seasonal switchgrass ecotype contributions to soil organic carbon, deep soil microbial community composition and rhizodeposit uptake during an extreme drought

“…1, Table 1). Other studies document a reduction in shoot:root ratio with drought, but inconsistent results with drought on root biomass (Barney et al, 2009). Greater root length per biomass investment in root structures (e.g.…”

Drought-tolerant Biofuel Crops could be a Critical Hedge for Biorefineries

“…However, we do know that a dry spell of seven weeks significantly diminishes harvestable yields [31] and infer that plant yield drops precipitously as each dry spell lengthens. In other words, the effect of a series of four 2-day dry spells is less than the effect of a single 8-day dry spell on switchgrass yield.…”

“…However, we exclude both since they are most effective in quantifying the severity of long-term droughts on the scale of months or years, while switchgrass appears to lose harvestable biomass during drought conditions on the scale of weeks [31]. A soil dryness index has been developed and applied in Australia that measures daily soil moisture over a season to determine fire management strategies, but the methodology does not focus on duration of dryness but instead observes seasonal effects on soil moisture [32].…”

Drought Tolerance and Stress Hormones: From Model Organisms to Forage Crops

“…In maize water deficit in the late developmental stage tends to reduce kernel size rather than number (Saini and Westgate, 2000;Boyer and Westgate, 2004). Similarly, Barney et al (2009) evaluated fitness under stressful growing conditions to characterize the agronomic and ecological traits related to environmental tolerance of switchgrass and found that drought treatments (-4.0 and -11.0 MPa) reduced tiller length and number, leaf area, and biomass production by up to 80%. The final outcome of stress response indicates that there is no single response pattern that is highly correlated with yield under all drought environments.…”