Plant electrophysiological reactions to specific environmental conditions

Abstract

Plant cells exhibit as much electrical activity as animal cells but the nature of these electrical variations remains poorly understood, particularly at the organism level. Transitions from darkness to light, mechanical shocks, temperature shocks, pathogen attacks, and physical damage to plants have been shown to elicit changes in plant electrical patterns at the organism level under laboratory conditions, however plant electrical behavior in natural environments remains comparatively understudied. Here, we demonstrate that simple extracellular voltage measurements across various wild plant species can identify associations between specific environmental conditions and patterns of electrical variation, ranging from seconds to hours, in plants exposed to these conditions.This work has potential applications in utlizing plants as environmental sensors.