6 Conclusions and perspectives
The appearance and diversification of adaptations to dry environments
and their underlying gene regulatory networks have been tightly shaped
at cell, tissue and organismal levels during evolution. These
adaptations were crucial for plants to colonize dry lands and survive
variations on water availability in the environment. Carbon
concentration mechanisms, desiccation tolerance and root
impermeabilization are among the main plant adaptations to dry
environments and share a similar pattern of convergent evolution in
phylogenetically distant organisms. Detailed physiological and
histological studies combined with recent genome and transcriptome
sequencing techniques will allow to access how these adaptations evolved
through millions of years. This information in combination with novel
methods to simulate drought conditions (e.g. Marchin, Ossola, Leishman,
and Ellsworth (2019)) and technologies for plant genetic modification
(e.g. CRISPR/Ca9) will have the power to help on the improvement of
plant performance in dry environments, specially in the current scenario
of increasing climate change.