Flooding Stress on Plants: Anatomical, Morphological and Physiological Responses

Flooding is a natural disturbance affecting crop and forage production worldwide due to the detrimental effects that it provokes on most terrestrial plants (Bailey-Serres & Voesenek, 2008; Colmer & Vosenek, 2009). Over the last years, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (http://www.ippc.ch) has informed that man-induced world climate change will increase the frequency of precipitations of higher magnitude as well as tropical cyclone activity. As a result, the occurrence of flooding events on flood plains (i.e. lowlands) and cultivated lands is expected to be higher (Arnell & Liu, 2001). On the other hand, the increasing world population, along with the intensification of agriculture have provoked a reduction in the arable land per capita, which has decreased over the last five decades from 0.32 ha to 0.21 ha, and it is expected to be further diminished up to 0.16 ha per capita by 2030 (FAO 2006 as cited in Mancuso & Shabala, 2010). As a consequence, marginal lands are being incorporated into production to cope with the rising food demand. These issues lead to the necessity to get highly productive crops in arable lands subjected to periodic events of water excess, and to introduce new (or improved) flood-tolerant forage species in floodprone pastures (and grasslands) devoted to livestock production. So, the understanding of plant functioning under flooding conditions is crucial in order to achieve these goals.