Cuticle mutants of Arabidopsis thaliana L. Heynh.: quantification of cuticular permeability

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The plant cuticle forming the leaf/atmosphere interface protects higher land-living plants from desiccation. In the past years, a series of Arabidopsis mutants with defects in cuticle formation have been described and genes with putative functions in cuticle biosynthesis have been identified. Although, it has been hypothesized that cuticular defects affect cuticular permeability, basic studies quantifying cuticular transport properties of cuticle mutants in an unambiguous way have not been carried out yet. Therefore convincing evidence that cuticular permeability is affected in these mutants is lacking. This project aims at correlating physiological properties of the Arabidopsis cuticle as a transport barrier with the genes involved in cuticle biosynthesis. This includes the quantitative determination of leaf surface transport properties of Arabidopsis cuticle mutants in comparison to the wild type. In addition, determined transport properties have to be related to changes in the chemical composition of cuticles of Arabidopsis mutants. Employing the model species Arabidopsis, results of this project will provide a more detailed knowledge of how cuticular function as a transport barrier is affected by changes of genetic determinants. The outcome of this research is relevant in the fields of plant stress physiology (stress tolerance of plants) and agricultural chemistry (foliar uptake of pesticides).