Early in my career I read the book What a Plant Knows by Daniel Chamovitz.
It gives plenty of insight into what a plant experiences and how that impacts it’s productivity. It’s a useful read for anyone wanting to understand the unique capabilities of plants, providing context on why biostimulants can be useful, or why various responses have adapted in plants.
Signalling between plants, and within plants, is a component of the book and a continually growing topic in the industry— I first wrote on the topic in 2013 surrounding quinabactin and drought management as one example, but the technology and capabilities over the last 10+ years have expanded.
That head led to more interest, and opportunity with new technology and growing ability to measure abiotic stress.
For example, I recently highlighted in Companies and the Technological Convergence Driving the Future of Biostimulants how RNA based products can be used to influence a plants internal signalling to help them overcome specific stressors:
RNA technology can address abiotic stress by mimicking the plant’s natural biology, using RNAs to trigger protective responses like stomatal control, and enhanced root growth without altering the plant’s DNA. RNA formulations could be rapidly tailored to specific crops and conditions, enabling better enabling adaptation to abiotic stress. Newly launched company Terrana Bio is an example working on this opportunity.
Abiotic stress management remains a significant opportunity for farmers to manage and for crop input companies to solve for with research from 2000 illustrating just how significant of a loss can come from abiotic stresses:
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