Work

Carbon remodeling aids marsh adaptation and resilience in Typha (Cattails)

Year: 2026

Type: preprint

Abstract: Wetland plants contribute to long term carbon storage, shoreline stabilization, bioremediation, and flood protection, yet the traits that allow them to thrive in oxygen-poor sediments remain poorly understood 1,2. Identifying these traits is increasingly important as many crops are vulnerable to waterlogging, hypoxia and unstable hydrology. Therefore, wetland plants can reveal new strategies to develop more resilient crops 3. Typha domingensis (Southern Cattail) is a dominant marsh species with exceptional tolerance for inundation, but its survival strategies have not been fully resolved 4–6. Here we show that T. domingensis employs clonal propagation, convective internal gas flow, flexible carbon metabolism and selective root barriers with unusual suberin chemistry. By combining anatomy, cell wall chemistry, genomics, developmental multi-omics and isotope tracing, we demonstrate that barrier formation is supported by coordinated shifts in phenylpropanoid metabolism, fatty-acid elongation and shoot-to-root carbon transport, including a prominent contribution of serine-linked one-carbon metabolism 7. Hypoxia suppresses bulk lipid biosynthesis while preserving the outer root barrier, revealing selective remodeling rather than simple barrier induction. These findings establish T. domingensis as a mechanistically tractable system for understanding how plants balance aeration, barrier formation and carbon allocation in their roots. More broadly, they identify wetland plants as a rich source of structural and metabolic design principles for engineering crop resilience in a warming world 3.

Source: Research Square

DOI: 10.21203/rs.3.rs-10607151/v1