Rewatering Plants after a Long Water-deficit Treatment Reveals that Leaf Epidermal Cells Retain their Ability to Expand after the Leaf has Apparently Reached its Final Size

摘要

Background and Aims Leaves expand during a given period of time until they reach their final size and form, which is called determinate growth. Duration of leaf expansion is stable when expressed in thermal-time and in the absence of stress, and consequently it is often proposed that it is controlled by a robust programme at the plant scale. The usual hypothesis is that growth cessation occurs when cell expansion becomes limited by an irreversible tightening of cell wall, and that leaf size is fixed once cell expansion ceases. The objective of this paper was to test whether leaf expansion could be restored by rewatering plants after a long soil water-deficit period.