Purslane Plant: A Super Plant That Can Create Drought Resistant Crops

In a world plagued by climate change, a common weed contains crucial hints about how to develop drought-resistant crops.

In their report published on August 5 in the journal Science Advances, Yale scientists explain how Portulaca oleracea, also known as purslane, integrates two different metabolic pathways to produce a novel type of photosynthesis that allows the weed to withstand drought while trying to remain highly productive.

Purslane

(Photo : Tawhidur R/Unsplash)

South America is the home of the low-growing annual plant known as purslane. The plant forms a matt and is 8 inches tall and 1 foot wide, with succulent, fleshy, narrow leaves, as per NC State Extension.

The flowers come in single, semi-double, and double forms and are available in shades of red, orange, yellow, white, and other pastel colors. On cloudy or rainy days, the flowers do not open, and they close from dusk until dawn.

This plant should be grown in full sun, well-drained sandy or rocky soil because it has a high tolerance for heat and drought.

Use purslane in front of the border, in pots and hanging planters, or let it cascade down a wall, or use it in rock or crevice gardens. This will reproduce on its own without being invasive.

Self-seeding will not occur if you deadhead. Care should be taken when handling seedlings because they don't respond well to transplanting.

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Purslane helps drought-tolerant crops

According to Erika Edwards, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Yale University and senior author of the study, this is a very uncommon combination of traits that has produced a kind of super plant that may be useful in projects like crop engineering, as per Yale News.

To enhance photosynthesis, the process by which green plants use sunlight to produce nutrients from carbon dioxide and water, plants have independently evolved a variety of distinct mechanisms.

 For instance, C4 photosynthesis, which was developed by corn and sugarcane, enables the plant to continue producing under high temperatures.

Another type of photosynthesis, known as CAM photosynthesis, is found in succulents like cacti and agaves, which helps them endure in arid climates and other low-water environments.

Although C4 and CAM perform distinct tasks, they both add  to standard photosynthesis by utilizing the same biochemical pathway.

The Yale team discovered that C4 and CAM activity are completely integrated after conducting a spatial analysis of gene expression within the leaves of purslane under the direction of co-corresponding authors and postdoctoral scholars Jose Moreno-Villena and Haoran Zhou.

They function in the same cells, with the C4 pathway processing the byproducts of CAM reactions. In times of drought, this system offers a C4 plant unusually high levels of protection.

Additionally, the scientists developed metabolic flux models that foretold the emergence of an integrated C4+CAM system that matched their research observations.

According to the authors, comprehending this novel metabolic pathway may enable scientists to develop fresh approaches for engineering crops like corn to better withstand protracted drought.

There is still a huge amount of work to be done before it is possible to engineer a CAM cycle into a C4 crop like maize, according to Edwards.

But what they demonstrated is that the two pathways could indeed effectively be combined and produce the same things. More than we had anticipated, C4 and CAM are compatible, which raises the possibility that there are numerous undiscovered C4+CAM species.

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