As climate change drives more frequent and unpredictable drought, scientists are studying resurrection plants to understand how their extreme survival traits could help agriculture become more resilient and sustainable.
What Are Resurrection Plants?
Resurrection plants are a small and exceptional group of flowering plants capable of surviving the loss of more than 90 per cent of their water content, remaining dormant for months before returning to full metabolic activity within hours of rehydration. Out of roughly 352,000 known flowering plant species, only around 240 are known to possess this ability, placing them firmly outside the evolutionary norm.
Where?
Most resurrection plants are found in regions already defined by extreme environmental stress, including southern Africa, parts of Australia, and South America. These landscapes are characterised by rocky slopes, shallow soils, and prolonged dry seasons broken by short, intense rainfall. In such conditions, resurrection plants have evolved to tolerate drought rather than avoid it, resuming growth with little long-term damage once water becomes available again.
How Do They Survive Extreme Dehydration?
At a cellular level, resurrection plants deploy a set of tightly coordinated survival mechanisms. For example, as water is lost, they replace it with sugars such as sucrose, transforming the internal contents of their cells into a glass-like, viscous state. This process, known as vitrification, dramatically slows chemical reactions and protects cellular structures from damage.
During dehydration, the plants also dismantle their photosynthetic machinery, including chloroplasts, effectively switching off photosynthesis to prevent light-induced stress. Protective proteins known as chaperones stabilise membranes and enzymes, helping the plant preserve tissue integrity through prolonged dryness and during the risky process of rehydration.
Similar strategies are seen in desiccation-tolerant organisms such as tardigrades and brine shrimp eggs, but resurrection plants are unique among flowering species in retaining this ability in fully developed leaves and stems.
Why Scientists Are Paying Attention To Them Now
One of the leading figures in resurrection plant research is Jill Farrant, professor of desiccation tolerance at the University of Cape Town. She has spent more than three decades studying how these plants preserve living tissue during extreme drying, describing the process in public lectures and academic commentary as “quite a miracle”.
The growing interest in this field is being driven by climate pressure. For example, droughts are becoming more frequent, more severe, and less predictable. According to the World Meteorological Organisation, drought has intensified globally over the past two decades, with agriculture consistently among the most affected sectors.
In the United States alone, drought, heat, and wildfires caused an estimated $16.6 billion in crop losses in 2023 (according to federal assessments). Also, climate models suggest that by the end of the century, large areas of sub-Saharan Africa, southern Europe, and South America may no longer be suitable for rain-fed agriculture.
The Limits Of Modern Crop Resilience
Modern crops have been bred primarily for yield, speed of growth, and uniformity, often at the expense of resilience. While many crop seeds can tolerate drying during storage, this desiccation tolerance is lost shortly after germination. Once drought strikes during active growth, damage is often permanent.
Carlos Messina, a maize scientist at the University of Florida, has highlighted this problem in published research and public commentary. He has said that maize plants may survive drought, but “when they rehydrate, they don’t go back to the same leaf architecture they had before, and the flow of CO₂ and water is all messed up”, leaving productivity compromised long after rainfall returns. Resurrection plants, by contrast, typically return to their original form and function.
Rethinking Drought Resistance In Crops
For decades, improving drought tolerance in crops has focused on avoidance strategies, such as deeper roots or faster flowering. These approaches help plants escape dry conditions but offer limited protection against sudden or prolonged water loss.
However, it seems that researchers are increasingly concerned about flash droughts, rapid dry periods that occur outside traditional seasonal patterns. For example, Timothy George, a soil scientist at the James Hutton Institute, has described this unpredictability as a defining feature of climate change, making avoidance strategies less reliable.
This has prompted a shift towards exploring whether crops can be engineered or bred to tolerate dehydration itself, rather than simply trying to outgrow it.
Genetic Pathways Without New Genes
Early attempts to transfer resurrection traits into crops seem to have mainly relied on transgenic genetic modification, i.e., inserting genes from unrelated species. While advances in CRISPR gene editing have made such work more precise, regulatory hurdles and public concern remain significant, particularly in Europe.
More recent research suggests that many of the genes involved in desiccation tolerance already exist within crop genomes, especially in seeds. Farrant and others argue that the challenge lies in reactivating these genetic programmes in mature plants, rather than introducing foreign DNA.
This work is increasingly supported by modern tools such as RNA sequencing, which allows scientists to track which genes are switched on and off during dehydration, and high-throughput plant phenotyping, which uses sensors and imaging systems to monitor stress responses in real time. Together, these technologies are helping researchers identify which genetic pathways matter most, and when they need to be activated.
Julia Buitink, a seed biologist at the French National Institute for Agriculture, Food, and Environment, has described this approach as technically feasible but biologically complex. In published research and interviews, she has stressed that activating stress-response genes often affects multiple plant systems at once, frequently reducing yield, which remains a critical concern for farmers.
Evidence From Targeted Genetic Studies
A notable proof-of-concept study emerged back in 2018, when researchers in Kenya and Sweden introduced a single gene from the resurrection plant Xerophyta viscosa into sweet potato. The gene, XvAld1, plays a role in antioxidant defence.
Under controlled drought conditions, the modified plants remained greener, lost fewer leaves, and continued growing longer than unmodified plants. Crucially, they showed no visible differences under normal watering conditions, suggesting drought protection could be activated without harming everyday growth.
The Role Of Microbiomes In Drought Survival
It’s worth noting here that genetics isn’t the only avenue being explored. For example, the plant root microbiome, or rhizosphere, has become a growing area of interest in drought research. Scientists are investigating whether microbial communities associated with resurrection plants help them tolerate extreme stress.
In fact, Farrant’s team has begun mapping the rhizosphere of Myrothamnus flabellifolia, a woody resurrection plant capable of surviving up to nine months without water. A 2024 study identified more than 900 distinct bacterial and fungal groups associated with its roots, raising the possibility that some drought tolerance traits could be transferred via microbial partnerships rather than genetic modification.
Teff And Its Resurrection Plant Relative
Another promising research pathway involves teff, a cereal grown for thousands of years in Ethiopia. Teff is naturally drought tolerant and has a close evolutionary relative, Eragrostis nindensis, which is itself a resurrection plant.
Comparative studies suggest that differences in sunlight protection, including antioxidant production and surface pigments that act like natural sun protection, may explain why one species survives extreme drought while the other does not. Understanding which traits were lost or silenced during domestication could inform future breeding or gene regulation strategies.
A Broader Sustainability Question
It seems that resurrection plants are no longer viewed as botanical curiosities, but more as representing a living archive of survival strategies largely set aside during the twentieth century’s drive for high-yield agriculture. Therefore, as climate pressures intensify, researchers are now increasingly questioning whether resilience, even at the cost of some productivity, may become essential for sustaining food systems in an increasingly unpredictable world.
What Does This Mean For Your Organisation?
The recent research around resurrection plants seems to point to a clear recalibration in how drought resilience is being approached, moving away from simply trying to avoid water stress and towards learning how plants can survive it without lasting damage. Rather than offering a single technological fix, this body of work highlights a combination of genetics, gene regulation, advanced sensing technologies, and microbiome science that together could reshape how crops cope with increasingly erratic conditions.
For farmers and agricultural supply chains, this matters because climate volatility is no longer a distant risk but a present operational challenge. Technologies such as RNA sequencing and real-time plant phenotyping are already helping researchers identify which traits genuinely improve recovery after drought, rather than just short-term survival. Over time, that knowledge could inform breeding programmes that prioritise stability and recovery, particularly in regions where rainfall can no longer be relied upon.
There are also some clear implications for UK businesses. For example, food producers, processors, and retailers are increasingly exposed to climate-driven supply disruption, even when crops are grown overseas. More resilient crop varieties could help stabilise yields, reduce price volatility, and support long-term procurement planning. Agri-technology firms, seed developers, and data-driven farming platforms also stand to benefit as demand grows for tools that monitor plant stress, optimise inputs, and support more resilient production systems.
At the same time, the research highlights the trade-offs involved. For example, improving resilience can come at the cost of yield, and regulatory barriers around genetic technologies remain significant, particularly in Europe. For policymakers, investors, and sustainability leaders, the challenge will be balancing innovation with public trust, food affordability, and environmental responsibility.
Taken together, resurrection plants offer less of a blueprint and more of a reference point. They show that extreme resilience is biologically possible, and that modern technology is making it easier to understand how it works. Whether that knowledge can be translated into scalable, acceptable, and economically viable solutions will shape not just future agriculture, but the resilience of food systems that UK businesses and consumers ultimately depend on.