Gustavo Maia Souza

Federal University of Pelotas | UFPEL · Department of Botany

All biotic and abiotic factors can act as stressors as surveyed here. In 1973 H. Selye has introduced a “biological stress concept” in medical science, which was subsequently adopted in plant biology and physiological ecology. Depending on the strength of stressors and the duration of their action, there is stimulating eustress and destructive dist...

Plant electrome corresponds to the emergent set of plant bioelectrical activity. The infection of plant tissues by different fungi alters this bioelectrical activity and can originate different electrical signatures, which can be used to identify the potential pathogenic agent. In this work, we evaluated the systemic variations of the electrome of...

We commence our discussion by asserting that Plant Physiology is fundamentally focused on comprehending the evolutionary and adaptive processes of plants over time. Despite its intuitive association with the temporal dimension, the field has traditionally been underpinned by methods that largely overlook the temporal element. Even in this era of ad...

Plant electrophysiology has unveiled the involvement of electrical signals in the physiology and behavior of plants. Spontaneously generated bioelectric activity can be altered in response to changes in environmental conditions, suggesting that a plant’s electrome may possess a distinct signature associated with various stimuli. Analyzing electrica...

Abiotic stresses are among the primary environmental variables that have consistently posed challenges to agricultural production worldwide. In the last decades, our understanding of how plants sense environmental cues has greatly expanded. This encompasses the mechanisms that convert environmental stress signals into cellular signaling pathways an...

Do living beings need brains to do extraordinary things? The human brain manages many tasks at the same time, from keeping the body working to thinking and dreaming, thanks to the electrical signals it produces. But what about organisms that survive pretty well without brains, like plants? You might be surprised to learn that plants can produce ele...

Priming in plants enables them to store information and better prepare for future stress. This study tested the hypothesis that priming rice plants (cv. BRS AG) improves sugar metabolism and transport in the grain-filling stage through memory effects. We investigated physiological changes, including source–sink parameters, carbohydrate metabolism,...

The Brazilian Space Agency (AEB) and the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (EMBRAPA) have signed a protocol of intentions under the Artemis Project to develop research, innovation, and technological solutions related to Space Farming. This initiative, known as "Space Farming Brazil," brings together nearly 45 researchers from 12 Brazilian...

Newly discovered plant behaviors, linked to historical observations, contemporary technologies, and emerging knowledge of signaling mechanisms, argue that plants utilize complex information processing systems. Plants are goal-oriented in an evolutionary and physiological sense; they demonstrate agency and learning. While most studies on plant plast...

Being sessile organisms that need to effectively explore space (above and below ground) and acquire resources through growth, plants must simultaneously consider multiple possibilities and wisely balance the energy they spend on growth with the benefits for survival [...]

Eragrostis plana Nees is a perennial grass weed, native to South Africa and an invasive species of dry rangelands across Asia, Australia, and South America. We hypothesise that E. plana has evolved mechanisms of acclimation to drought conditions to a greater extent than bahiagrass ( Paspalum notatum ), an important native grass forage species of li...

Background: Crop yields have been affected by many different biotic and abiotic factors. Generally, plants experience more than one stress during their life cycle, and plants can tolerate multiple stresses and develop cross-tolerance. The expected rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration ([CO2]) can contribute to cross-tolerance. Priming is a strateg...

Selective attention is an important cognitive phenomenon that allows organisms to flexibly engage with certain environmental cues or activities while ignoring others, permitting optimal behaviour. It has been proposed that selective attention can be present in many different animal species and, more recently, in plants. The phenomenon of attention...

Fruits, like other parts of the plant, appear to have a rich electrical activity that may contain information. Here, we present data showing differences in the electrome complexity of tomato fruits through ripening and discuss possible physiological processes involved. The complexity of the signals, measured through approximate entropy, varied alon...

To survive in a dynamic environment growing fixed to the ground, plants have developed mechanisms for monitoring and perceiving the environment. When a stimulus is perceived, a series of signals are induced and can propagate away from the stimulated site. Three distinct types of systemic signaling exist, i.e., (i) electrical, (ii) hydraulic, and (i...

Plants under suboptimal environmental conditions often present reduced crop yields due to effects on vital plant processes. On the other hand, pre-exposure to mildly stressful situations may prepare the plants to stand subsequent challenges. Waterlog-ging in lowland areas and herbicide injury are frequent stressful situations to which soybeans are...

The differential growth and yield response of plant species to rising carbon dioxide concentrations and climatic change may alter species diversity within biomes. The Pampa Biome in South America is an important grassland biome of agronomic and environmental importance. Acanthostyles buniifolius (Chirca) is one of the most important weeds in natura...

The effect of silicon (Si) amendment in the soil, combined with fungicide application 7 or 15 days before plant inoculation, was evaluated on barley plants challenged by Bipolaris sorokiniana. For this, the disease control, the gas exchange parameters, and the concentration of photosynthetic pigments were evaluated on two barley cultivars (AnaG01 a...

Attention is the important ability of flexibly controlling limited cognitive resources. It ensures that organisms engage with the activities and stimuli that are relevant to their survival. Despite the cognitive capabilities of plants and their complex behavioural repertoire, the study of attention in plants has been largely neglected. In this arti...

Memory is a phenomenon that allows organisms, including plants, to store and recall information from previous events and then change their responses to future stressful conditions. The mechanisms of memory in plants seem to have (epi)genetic, metabolic, and also electrical bases. Fruits, like other plant modules, are subject to different stimuli fr...

1) Background: Eragrostis plana Ness is a invasive C4 perennial grass in South America and very adaptable to environmental stresses. Our hypothesis is that there is a transgenerational cross-talk between environmental stresses and weed response to herbicides. This study's objectives were to: (1) evaluate if E. plana primed by drought stress (DRY),...

Severe water stress is responsible for reducing plant growth and reproduction. This study aimed to evaluate the physiological and biochemical mechanisms associated with the tolerance of two genotipes of bahiagrass (Paspalum notatum Flügge) with different ploidy level to water deficit and flooding at the reproductive stage. Photosynthetic performanc...

The physiological processes underlying fruit ripening can lead to different electrical signatures at each ripening stage, making it possible to classify tomato fruit through the analysis of electrical signals. Here, the electrical activity of tomato fruit (Solanum lycopersicum var. cerasiforme) during ripening was investigated as tissue voltage var...

There are many studies showing the influence of the magnetic field (MF) on the antioxidant system (AS) in plants, but little is known about the mechanisms behind it. Among some possibilities, calcium transmembrane dynamics is a likely candidate in mediating responses of ROS to MF. Thus, the use of calcium channel inhibitor lanthanum (La3+) could br...

The electrical activity of tomato plants subjected to fruit herbivory was investigated. The study aimed to test the hypothesis that tomato fruits transmit long-distance electrical signals to the shoot when subjected to herbivory. For such, time series classification by machine learning techniques and analyses related to the oxidative response were...

Drought is a pivotal cause for crop yield reductions. When subjected to recurrent external stimuli, plants can develop memory of stress responses that, eventually, enables improved plant tolerance to environmental changes. In addition, despite causal relationships, these responses may vary according to hierarchical levels of observation. Thus, this...

Energy production needs to increase in order to meet population and industrial growth in the coming decades, and clean energy that promotes the reduction of polluting gases in the atmosphere is required. Sugarcane is a crop with great potential for bioenergy production due to its high potential for converting solar energy into biomass. In this cont...

Plant-plant interactions like competition or facilitation between seedlings can have profound implications on their establishment and posterior development. These interactions are variable and depend upon the presence of neighbouring plants and environmental factors. In this work, we studied the effects of the interaction by the roots of Eucalyptus...

In October 2020, at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, a group of young Brazilian photosynthesis researchers organized the 1st Brazilian Symposium on Photosynthesis. The event was free and online, with the presence of important guest speakers from all over the world, who discussed their recent works on topics related to the future and perspectives...

In October 2020, at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, a group of young Brazilian photosynthesis researchers organized the 1st Brazilian Symposium on Photosynthesis. The event was free and online, with the presence of important guest speakers from all over the world, who discussed their recent works on topics related to the future and perspectives...

In our study, we investigated some physiological and ecological aspects of the life of Cuscuta racemosa Mart. (Convolvulaceae) plants with the hypothesis that they recognise different hosts at a distance from them, and they change their survival strategy depending on what they detect. We also hypothesised that, as an attempt of prolonging their sur...

Stability is a key trait for plant growth and development in a changing environment, involving homeostasis and resilience. While homeostasis refers to the maintenance of the internal structural and functional plant integrity, resilience is associated with the plant ability in returning to the initial conditions after a given disturbance. Such conce...

Weeds represent an increasing challenge for crop systems since they have evolved adaptability to adverse environmental conditions, such as salinity stress. Herbicide effectiveness can be altered by the quality of water in which the weed is growing. This research aimed to study the combined effect of salt stress and recurrent selection with a sublet...

Bioregulators act as priming agents under abiotic stress conditions. Bioregulators such as gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) and acetylcholine (ACh) affect the efficiency of the antioxidant system and the regulation of the stomatal aperture, respectively. The aim of this study was to verify a possible synergistic effect among these bioregulators as at...

It is time to recognize the existence of plant memory, a phenomenon that allows plants to store and recall information from previous events and then change their responses to future stressful conditions. Although many recent publications have addressed this topic and concluded about plant memory using either classical or advanced approaches, severa...

Drought is the main constrain for crops worldwide, however, the effects of recurrent water deficit remains still hidden. We analysed two rice genotypes, ‘BRS‐Querência’ (lowlands) and ‘AN‐Cambará’ (uplands), after seven days of recurrent drought followed by 24 h of rehydration, hypothesizing that genotypes grown in regions with different water avai...

This work aimed to verify the existence of patterns on the electrophysiological systemic responses of tomato plants inoculated with a pathogenic fungus in an environment with controlled light and temperature. Electrical signalling was measured before and after inoculation in the same plants, and data were analysed with time series techniques and ap...

Plants can develop differentially because of their ability of self/nonself discrimination and the degree of kinship among them. Here, we evaluate the ability of self/nonself discrimination of Eucalyptus urophylla S.T. Blake roots in plant groups with different levels of relatedness. We used three plant groups: clonal, half-siblings, and population....

Plants do not possess brains or neurons. However, they present astonishingly complex behaviors such as information acquisition, memory, learning, decision making, etc., which helps these sessile organisms deal with their ever-changing environments. As a consequence, they have been proposed to be cognitive and intelligent, an idea which is becoming...

Hypotheses: The drive to survive is a biological universal. Intelligent behaviour is usually recognised when individual organisms including plants, in the face of fiercely competitive or adverse, real world circumstances, change their behaviour to improve their probability of survival. Scope: This article explains the potential relationship of i...

Reaction-diffusion models can be used to describe temporal and spatial dynamics of populations. When the interests is the relationship of a given species with the environment in which it is inserted, we can model this phenomenon through the equation of Fisher–Kolmogorov that, in a mathematical sense, consider the existence of a source term, that re...

The sessile lifestyle of plants exposes them to many challenges that must be overcome to ensure their survival. Despite their apparent lack of movement and behaviour, plants are very active organisms that constantly respond to external cues and internal signals, making fine tunings at the metabolic, cellular and tissue levels. To accomplish this, p...

The main question herein is about the extent that reductionist approach can reach higher-level explanation as well as predict behavior from lower level of systems organization when concerning stability. Starting from a theoretical discussion on the complex hierarchical organization of biological systems, we offer a variety of examples showing the i...

In this manuscript, we propose that plants are eco-plastic and electromic interfaces that can drive emergent intelligent behaviours from synchronized electrical networks. Behind the semantic and anthropocentric problems related by many authors to the extensive use of the terms cognition, intelligence or even 'consciousness' for plants, we suggest a...

Drought stress can imprint marks in plants after a previous exposure, leading to plant acclimation and a permissive state that facilitates a more effective response to subsequent stress events. Such stress imprints would benefit plants obtained through vegetative propagation (propagules). Herein, our hypothesis was that the propagules obtained from...

Biomass accumulation by origin plants under water deficit. Biometry of plants grown under well-watered (reference) conditions or subjected to cycles of water deficit. Measurements were taken after 80 days of treatment. Different letters mean statistical differences between treatments (p<0.05). (DOCX)

General view of origin plants after water deficit. Visual aspect of plants grown under cycles of water deficit (left) or under well-watered conditions (right). (DOCX)

Time course of leaf gas exchange in origin plants under water deficit. Leaf CO2 assimilation of plants maintained well-watered (W) or subjected to three cycles of water deficit (D). The grey area represents water withholding (nine days) and the dotted line indicates null photosynthesis. Each symbol represents the mean values ± s.d. (n = 4). (DOCX)

It is not unanimous among scientists if there is beauty in science. Some deny it. Mental clarity of conclusions when captured in simple looking equations is mathematical beauty. This we also find in the Euclidian geometry when performing the Golden Section and by deriving the Golden or Devine Number in golden rectangles, spirals and the Golden Angl...

Drought stress can imprint marks in plants after a previous exposure, leading to a permissive state that facilitates a more effective response to subsequent stress events. Such stress imprints would benefit plants obtained from progenitors previously exposed to drought. Herein, our hypothesis was that daughter plants obtained from mother plants pre...

This book assembles recent research on memory and learning in plants. Organisms that share a capability to store information about experiences in the past have an actively generated background resource on which they can compare and evaluate coming experiences in order to react faster or even better. This is an essential tool for all adaptation purp...

Herein, we have proposed a concept of plant learning based on some principles of systemic plant ecophysiology. In order to accomplish this task, a framework consisting in basic epistemological assumptions is offered, as well as a cognitive context that underpins the perspective of learning. Accordingly, a number of empirical studies are quoted to i...

Under field conditions, plants are exposed to cycles of dehydration and rehydration during their lifespan. In this study, we hypothesized that sugarcane plants previously exposed to cycles of water deficits will perform better than plants that have never faced water deficits when both are subjected to low water availability. Sugarcane plants were g...

The water availability at early phenological stages is critical for crop establishment and sugarcane varieties show differential performance under drought. Herein, we evaluated the relative importance of morphological and physiological plasticity of young sugarcane plants grown under water deficit, testing the hypothesis that high phenotypic plasti...

In plants, there are different types of electrical signals involving changes in membrane potentials that could encode electrical information related to physiological states when plants are stimulated by different environmental conditions. A previous study analyzing traits of the dynamics of whole plant low-voltage electrical showed, for instance, t...

Urochloa brizantha is one of the most important warm season forage grasses in tropical countries. Despite its importance, there are few studies on gene expression in this species under stressful conditions. Real-time (RT-qPCR) is an accurate technique for gene quantification analysis, but reference genes must be validated under the same conditions...

Main conclusion: The set of variables analyzed as integrated by multivariate analysis of principal components consistently showed a memory effect induced by the drought pre-treatment in AN Cambará plants. The effects of drought can vary ddepending on many factors. Among these the occurrence of a previous water stress may leave a residual effect (m...

Key results: We have found by Approximate Entropy analysis that the level of temporal complexity of the electrical signals was affected by the environmental conditions, decreasing when plant was subjected to low osmotic potential. Electrical spikes observed only after stimuli followed a power law distribution, which is indicative of scale invarian...

In the present study, we have investigated how the low-voltage electrical signals of soybean seedlings change their temporal dynamic under different environmental conditions (cold, low light, and low osmotic potential). We have used electrophytografic technique (EPG) with sub-dermal electrodes inserted in 15-days-old seedlings located between root...

Acetylcholine (Ach) is a common neurotransmitter in animals, also synthesized in plants, which can have an influence on plant response to stress, also acting as a signaling molecule between root and shoot. The objective of this study was to analyze the possible mitigating effects of exogenous application of Ach on soybean germination under differen...

produção mundial de energia necessita aumentar no mínimo 50% até 2050 de modo a se atender crescimento populacional e o desenvolvimento econômico. Uma das estratégias será aumentar a eficiência da conversão de energia solar em fito-energia, no entanto, ainda faz se necessário conhecer qual a real eficiência deste processo à campo e como o ambiente...

We investigated whether there were consistent differences in the physiological and anatomical traits and phenotypic variability of an invasive (Prosopis juliflora (Sw.) DC.) and native species (Anadenanthera colubrina (Vell.) Brenan) in response to seasonality in a tropical dry forest. The water potential, organic solutes, gas exchange, enzymes of...

Studies on plant electrophysiology are mostly focused on specific traits of action potentials (APs) and/or variation potentials (VPs), often in single cells. Inspired by the complexity of the signaling network in plants and by analogies with some traits of neurons in human brains, we have sought for evidences of high complexity in the electrical dy...

This manuscript brings a critical reflection on the epistemological foundations of the science of plant physiology. We discuss the limits of the reductionist view of the science, indicating new epistemological possibilities to plant physiology, specially based on General System Theory and Complex System paradigm, and the further implications of thi...

Water deficiency during the dry seasons influences the relationship between water and gas exchange in tropical grasses, reducing their productive potential. In addition, the phosphorus (P) deficiency Brazilian soils adds to the set of factors limiting crop production. In this context, the objective of this study was to evaluate the responses of dif...

Hierarchy is considered as a central and essential aspect of systems biology. In a theoretical section on hierarchy, considerations include discussion of the simultaneous spatiotemporal operation in both top-down and bottom-up modes. Emergent biological systems are not reducible to their parts or modules. Reactions to signals may be different and e...

Wet tropical forest trees display a wide range of leaf phenology dynamics. However, the interrelation between deciduousness, water status, and leaf and stem characteristics have been poorly investigated compared with dry forests. We studied wet forest trees to answer the following questions: (1) do water regulation modes (iso/anisohydric behavior)...

Wet tropical forest trees display a wide range of leaf phenology dynamics. However, the interrelation between deciduousness, water status, and leaf and stem characteristics have been poorly investigated compared with dry forests. We studied wet forest trees to answer the following questions: (1) do water regulation modes (iso/anisohydric behavior)...

Oscillations in plants can occur at various levels. Their physiological processes evolve during time, presenting a variable dynamics1. Different oscillatory dynamics in different physiological processes in plants have been observed under different environmental conditions. Oscillatory dynamics allow to organisms flexibility in responses to environm...

The maintenance of a plant water status is essential for keeping of its development in environ-ments with limited water availability. Different species have different mechanisms that provide greater ability to survive under drought conditions. The objective of this study was to evaluate physiological parameters changes of the isohydric species Beau...