Preconditioning to Water Deficit Helps Aloe vera to Overcome Long-Term Drought during the Driest Season of Atacama Desert.

ABSTRACT: Throughout evolution, plants have developed different strategies of responses and adaptations that allow them to survive in different conditions of abiotic stress. Aloe vera (L.) Burm.f. is a succulent CAM plant that can grow in warm, semi-arid, and arid regions. Here, we tested the effects of preconditioning treatments of water availability (100, 50, and 25% of soil field capacity, FC) on the response of A. vera to prolonged drought growing in the hyper-arid core of the Atacama Desert. We studied leaf biomass, biochemical traits, and photosynthetic traits to assess, at different intervals of time, the effects of the preconditioning treatments on the response of A. vera to seven months of water deprivation. As expected, prolonged drought has deleterious effects on plan

SUBMITTER: Delatorre-Castillo JP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9183172 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature