Physiological Effects of Drought Stress in Plants

The most common effect of the drought stress is to reduce the water potential, the turgor pressure in the growing cells, and thus the lack of turgor pressure necessary for their growth. Lack of water accelerates cell differentiation. Under drought stress, root, stem, leaf, and fruit growth decreases. Also, in these conditions, not all plant organs are affected equally. As a rule, due to drought stress, the ratio of leaves to stems decreases. Older leaves and leaves that are exposed to shade usually die sooner, slow down tillering, and increase tiller death in tillering species. Physiologic effects of water stress contain so many cases such as reduction of relative water content (RWC), reduction of intercellular space during wilting, effect of drought stress on photosynthesis, effect of drought stress on respiration, effect of drought stress on photosynthetic derivative distribution, effect of drought stress on metabolism, accumulation of sugars, drought stress and protein breakdown, and the effect of drought stress on ABA hormone, which are among the most important of these cases.