Smarter stomata: emergent technologies unlocking yield potential in a changing climate.

Abstract

Stomata, the gatekeepers of leaf gas exchange, regulate carbon dioxide uptake and water loss, functions increasingly critical as crops face more frequent, intense heat and drought. Under dry conditions, stomatal conductance ( g s ) typically decreases, limiting carbon assimilation and yield. Heat stress, in contrast, elicits variable g S responses: sometimes increasing to facilitate transpirational cooling, while at other times decreasing, especially when combined with drought. Heat and drought also induce complex, context-dependent shifts in stomatal anatomy. Smaller, denser stomata improve drought resilience in some cases, while reduced density confers greater tolerance in others. The optimal stomatal ideotype remains unknown, and different or even opposing traits may confer resilience dependent on the environmental scenario. Substantial genotypic variation in g s and stomatal anatomy, high heritability and co-localized quantitative trait loci for stomatal traits and yield highlight their untapped potential as breeding targets for climate-resilient crops. However, stomatal traits remain largely absent from breeding pipelines due to challenges of phenotyping at scale. This is changing rapidly. Advances in deep learning, porometry, digital microscopy, and remote sensing now enable high-throughput measurement of stomatal physiology and anatomy. Next-generation breeding technologies including clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR), multi-omics approaches, and artificial intelligence-driven ideotype selection models could revolutionize breeding, allowing precise engineering of stomatal traits for resilience to environmental stress. The time has come to move beyond characterizing stomatal traits and start actively incorporating them into breeding strategies. By leveraging these technologies, stomatal traits can become high value targets, unlocking their potential to enhance crop performance in a hotter, drier future.

Plant phenotyping relevance

気孔の生理・解剖形質を大規模に取得する深層学習、ポロメトリー、デジタル顕微鏡、リモートセンシング技術を扱うレビューであり、植物フェノタイピング手法が実質的な主題に含まれる。

Code and data availability

This is a review article on stomatal phenotyping technologies. It presents no original phenotype datasets, images, code, models, or supplements of its own. The only repository-like URL (hdl.handle.net/2445/112467) appears in the reference list for a cited 2015 thesis by Minguet, which is prior work, not a paper-phenot-

No evidence-backed public reproduction asset is currently recorded.