By Joseph Swift and Xuelin Wu et.al
The United States and Mexico have been in a historic megadrought since the turn of the century. For more than 25 years, the American Southwest has faced the severe social and economic consequences of this megadrought—including a $1.1 billion agricultural loss in California in 2021 alone. With these conditions persisting, how can we help crops withstand drought while minimizing yield loss?
Salk Institute scientists profiled nearly a million cells from the leaves of Arabidopsis thaliana, a small flowering plant that serves as a laboratory stand-in for important crops like corn, wheat, and rice. The team measured changes in gene expression in these cells across different drought levels and leaf developmental stages and compiled the data into a public atlas.
The new atlas revealed that drought conditions accelerate leaf aging, but a specific gene could be used to rescue leaf growth during drought.
The study, published in Nature Plants on March 19, 2026, provides a roadmap that could help researchers engineer crop varieties that better maintain growth during drought.
“We have been grinding up leaves and looking at general gene expression for a long time now—this is the first time we are looking at drought with cell type-specific resolution,” says Joseph Ecker, PhD, senior author of the study, professor and holder of the Salk International Council Chair in Genetics at Salk, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. “We are pushing the boundaries of what is known, and this atlas provides a really critical view into how plants are impacted by their environment.”
Source : salk.edu