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Effect of Abscisic Acid on Root Hydraulic Conductivity ¹

Department of Botany, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina 27706, United States Department of Agriculture, Science and Education Administration, Agricultural Research, Crops Research Laboratory, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado 80523

Reports of the effects of abscisic acid (ABA) on ion and water fluxes have been contradictory. Some of the confusion seems due to the interaction of ion and water transport across membranes. In these experiments root systems were subjected to hydrostatic pressures up to 5.0 bars to enable measurement of root conductance that was independent of measurement of osmotic potentials or ion fluxes.

ABA between 5 x 10^–5 molar and 2 x 10^–4 molar resulted in a decrease in the conductance of the soybean root systems as compared with the controls. ABA treatment also eliminated the discontinuity in the Arrhenius plot of total flow versus reciprocal temperature at constant pressure. The results suggest that ABA acts at the membrane that is rate-limiting to water flow directly, or by altering metabolism that in turn affects the membrane.

³ Current address: Botanisches Institut der Tievärztlichen Hochschule Hannover, Hannover, Federal Republic of Germany.

⁴ USDA SEA-AR, Crops Research Laboratory, Colorado State University.

¹ Research supported by National Science Foundation Grants PCM76-11142-A01-2 to Dr. P. J. Kramer and DEB77-15845 to Dr. Henry Hellmers for the Duke University Phytotron.

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