Phytosensors and phytoactuators

Abstract

Plants continuously sense a wide variety of perturbations and produce various responses known as tropisms in plants. It is essential for all plants to have survival sensory mechanisms and actuators responsible for a specific plant response process. Plants are ideal adaptive structures with smart sensing capabilities based on different types of tropisms, such as chemiotropism, geotropism, heliotropism, hydrotropism, magnetotropism, phototropism, thermotropism, electrotropism, thigmotropism, and host tropism. Plants can sense mechanical, electrical and electromagnetic stimuli, gravity, temperature, direction of light, insect attack, chemicals and pollutants, pathogens, water balance, etc. Here we show how plants sense different environmental stresses and stimuli and how phytoactuators response to them. Plants generate various types of intracellular and intercellular electrical signals in response to these environmental changes. This field has both theoretical and practical significance because these phytosensors and phytoactuators employ new principles of stimuli reception and signal transduction and play a very important role in the life of plants.