The hydraulic functioning of plants as a disciplinary hub

The aim of this network is to place the hydraulic functioning of plants at the heart of the adaptation of terrestrial ecosystems to climate change

PsiHub objectives

Water plays a central role in plant biology. The study of the hydric functioning of plants is a disciplinary field that is now well structured and formalised, and could become a unifying factor for many disciplines involved in understanding and predicting the functioning of ecosystems under global change. 

The challenge of the Psi-Hub network is to use plant hydric functioning as a conceptual base that can be connected to other disciplines in order to answer questions that go well beyond physiology, and look at the ecology of species, their biogeography and the functioning of terrestrial ecosystems. 

To this end, the network aims to federate different disciplines around the hydric functioning of plants. 

In other words, the aim is to make the field of plant hydraulics predictive, operational and “useful” to society. By making the analogy with the “Hub”, Psi-Hub implicitly proposes that the discipline that studies the hydric status of plants should be able to connect plant physiology to numerous disciplines in ecology.