Question: Are plants able to change themselves to adapt to their surroundings, and if they do can we take advantage of that and make it so we can grow plants in places like the sahara desert?

Sarah Harvey answered on 17 Mar 2014:

Hiya! Good question but I’d say the short answer is yes! Because plants can’t just get up and walk away to somewhere better they have to adapt to where they are.

So this may come as a surprise to you but one thing plants are sensitive to is too much light! So they can do things like moving their chloroplasts away from the direct sunlight to avoid getting them damaged – a bit like us getting our skin damaged if we stay out in the sun for too long. They can also adapt over time, for example if you grow plants under salty conditions then their offspring will show higher tolerance to the salt stress.

In answer to the second bit of your question – scientists have been looking at the methods of photosynthesis in some plants which are drought resistant and one method these plants use is called ‘C4 photosynthesis’, where basically their leaves are arranged differently to be more water efficient. There’s some work going on at the moment to see if we can use this system in crop plants so they can grow in areas where drought is a problem.