Guard cell and subsidiary cell sizes are key determinants for stomatal kinetics and drought adaptation in cereal crops
Mengmeng Rui, Rongjia Chen, Yi Jing, Feibo Wu, Zhong‐Hua Chen, David T. Tissue, Hangjin Jiang, Yizhou Wang
Abstract
Summary Climate change‐induced drought is a major threat to agriculture. C 4 crops have a higher water use efficiency (WUE) and better adaptability to drought than C 3 crops due to their smaller stomatal morphology and faster response. However, our understanding of stomatal behaviours in both C 3 and C 4 Poaceae crops is limited by knowledge gaps in physical traits of guard cell (GC) and subsidiary cell (SC). We employed infrared gas exchange analysis and a stomatal assay to explore the relationship between GC/SC sizes and stomatal kinetics across diverse drought conditions in two C 3 (wheat and barley) and three C 4 (maize, sorghum and foxtail millet) upland Poaceae crops. Through statistical analyses, we proposed a GCSC‐ τ model to demonstrate how morphological differences affect stomatal kinetics in C 4 Poaceae crops. Our findings reveal that morphological variations specifically correlate with stomatal kinetics in C 4 Poaceae crops, but not in C 3 ones. Subsequent modelling and experimental validation provide further evidence that GC/SC sizes significantly impact stomatal kinetics, which affects stomatal responses to different drought conditions and thereby WUE in C 4 Poaceae crops. These findings emphasize the crucial advantage of GC/SC morphological characteristics and stomatal kinetics for the drought adaptability of C 4 Poaceae crops, highlighting their potential as future climate‐resilient crops.