Stomata are pores in the leaf that allow gas exchange where water vapor leaves the plant and carbon dioxide enters. Under natural condition, plants always experience at a fluctuating light regime (shade-/sun-fleck) and due to global climate change, occasionally extreme high temperature and CO2 enrichment will be inevitable occurred, which dramatically affects stomatal response, and trade-off between water-use efficiency and photosynthesis. Response of stomata to fluctuating and stressed environments determines optimized strategy of plants directing to water save or photosynthesis. Dynamic adjustments of stomata play an equivalent role as steady-state stomatal characteristics. Evolutionary approach indicated that stomatal-dynamic adjustments interacting with historical environments or life histories could be genetically controlled and environmentally selected. In this article, we reviewed physiological response of stomatal dynamic to changing enironments including our previous works, and discussed the possibility of genetic improvements on stomatal adjustments by estimating broad-sense heritability and SNP heritability of stomatal pattern. To gain insight into the framework of stomatal genetics, we highlighted the importance of combining multidisciplinary techniques, such as mathematic modeling, quantitative genetics, molecular biology and equipments developments.
Part of the book: Applied Photosynthesis