Decentralized plant thermosensing could revolutionize agriculture

Plants don’t rely on a single internal sensor to detect heat. They integrate thermal information through a decentralized genetic network. The discovery challenges long-held theories about how plants sense and respond to temperature.

The study was led by researchers from Monash University in Australia, in partnership with institutions in India and the United States. They showed that proteins and biological processes spread throughout the plant organism react to heat in a coordinated way, without a "central thermometer".

According to Professor Sureshkumar Balasubramanian, who coordinated the research, the discovery could transform the way agricultural varieties adapted to climate change are developed.

“We can create customized crops for different regions, which becomes vital in the face of extreme weather events such as droughts and floods,” he said.

The new theory allows us to pinpoint temperature-sensitive elements within plants, making targeted genetic manipulation possible. “It’s like personalized medicine, but applied to plants,” said co-author Sridevi Sureshkumar.

This approach could outperform existing genetically modified crops. It opens up the possibility of producing food in places previously considered unsuitable due to climate.

More information at science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adv5407