Abstract text: Climate change is causing rising temperatures, reduced water availability, and more unpredictable extreme weather events, among others, threatening agricultural production. Due to their fixed lifestyle, plants have evolved a flexible growth strategy focused on adapting to their changing environment rather than on migration. This is a complex scenario for fruit crops such as strawberries, which must maintain their yield but also their organoleptic attributes. Therefore, studying the strawberry plant’s responses to water stress is of great interest in the search for biotechnological alternatives to counteract the negative effects of water scarcity on its production and quality.

Plant cell walls are multifaceted due to their eclectic nature—both rigid and dynamic—and their matrix structure plays a key role in regulation of growth (conferring shape and structure) and of water management (retaining water). Plant responses to water stress are varied and multi-level, including cell wall modifications, but irrigation of commercial crops has hindered their in-depth study.

This work included cell wall analyses of various tissues (roots, leaves, and fruits) from two strawberry commercial varieties, under control and water-deficient irrigation treatments. The results reveal common and genotype-specific responses, demonstrating the cell wall plasticity under the same water-deficient conditions.