Chemical Approaches for Improving Plant Water Use.

Agricultural productivity in rain-fed crops has been threatened in recent decades due to increased instances of drought and diminishing freshwater resources. This has led to the development of novel chemical and genetic approaches for improving plant water use efficiency. Agrochemical water-banking with the aid of synthetic mimics of phytohormone abscisic acid (ABA) is one such approach, whereby plant transpiration can be chemically tuned to ensure water availability during critical stages of growth. Here, we describe the use of infrared thermography, a noninvasive quantitative technique to evaluate antitranspirant efficacy of existing ABA receptor agonists in crops such as wheat and tomato.