Editorial: Current advances and challenges in understanding plant desiccation tolerance

Citation: Moore JP and Farrant JM (2015) Editorial: Current advances and challenges in understanding plant desiccation tolerance. One of the most exciting and gratifying privileges of having edited this research topic on plant desiccation tolerance is that we received papers and reviews on resurrection plant species (particularly angiosperms) covering five continents, almost six, although unfortunately we did not quite get there. We were certainly incredibly fortunate for the kind responses of colleagues in Africa providing us with papers dealing with their own (favorite) particular resurrection plant species and the recent discoveries that they have made. It is with this in mind that we are moving toward a more global understanding of resurrection plants, and angiosperm species in particular, although often referred to as being particularly rich in diversity in southern Africa (Moore et al., 2009). We have noted that more and more studies are being made of resurrection species around the globe, as species are being uncovered in China such as Boea hygrometrica (this research topic, Mitra et al., 2013) and Paraboea rufescens (Huang et al., 2012) both in the Gesneriaceae and in South America Also in Brazil specifically, with Barbacenia purpurea (this research topic, Suguiyama et al., 2014) in the Velloziaeace. It is with this in mind that we are realizing more and more that plant desiccation tolerance in angiosperms is far less uncommon than previously suspected, and certainly has re-evolved as an adaptive feature on all continents (except for the South Pole, but this may well be provisional). We start off our quest for understanding plant desiccation tolerance with the green algae; here we are grateful for the first comprehensive review on this under-studied area, with a contribution from Holzinger and Karstens (2013). It is clear that algal cells were obviously the first " plants " to experience desiccation during land plant evolution. Far from following a simple single strategy, Holzinger and Karstens (2013) show that a variety of strategies appear to be employed to mitigate desiccation in both the Streptophyta and Chlorophyta lineages. We were hoping to include lichens and bryophytes (mosses), but these have been adequately covered in Moore et al. (2009). Our shift into the angiosperms, starts with an unlikely species, Arabidopsis thaliana (Djafi et al., 2013), however much is inferred, developed, tested using the Arabidopsis genetic model. In this case, an important area of angiosperm desiccation tolerance involves signaling (Moore et al., 2009), and …