Natural stress plant growth. When there is no water in the soil there are not very many nutrients to support plant growth. Drought also enhances the effects of wind. When drought occurs the soil becomes very dry and light. The wind picks up this dry dirt and carries it away. This action severely degrades the soil and creates a poor condition for growing plants. Plants have been exposed to the elements for thousands of years. During this time they have evolved in order to lessen the effects of abiotic stress. Signal transduction is the mechanism in plants that is responsible for the
Plant defense against herbivory change their defenses in response to changes in nutrients. For example, if plants are grown in low-nitrogen conditions, then these plants will implement a defensive strategy composed of constitutive carbon-based defenses. If nutrient levels subsequently increase, by for example the addition of fertilizers, these carbon-based defenses will decrease. The growth rate hypothesis, also known as the "resource availability hypothesis", states that defense strategies are determined by the inherent growth rate of the plant, which is in turn determined by the resources available to the plant. A major assumption is that available resources are the limiting factor in determining the maximum