Question

Wilting occurs due to excessive
a. Transpiration
b. Respiration
c. Guttation
d. Absorption

Answer 1

Wilting is nothing but the loss of rigidity of non woody parts of the plants, those parts of the loss its actual shape, and the surface area of the exposure is reduced, and in this situation, turgor pressure becomes zero.

Complete answer:
- Wilting mainly occurs, when the loss of water is more than the absorption of water.
- The process of wilting is a protective phase, where this process makes the plant parts less exposed to the outer environment to reduce water loss.
- In this process, the leaf angular distribution may be changed.
- So the condition where wilting occurs is excessive loss of water, generally, in plants, water is passed out through stomata to the external environment by a process called transpiration.
- So wilting occurs when there is excessive transpiration, and there are so many reasons for excessive transpiration.
- In situations like drought conditions, where the water content of the soil drops very less, so here water absorption by plants becomes less, but transpiration remains the same may result in wilting.
- Some other situations such as high temperatures, where sometimes vascular tissues cannot function.
- In the case of water with high salinity where excessive water loss occurs from the plant cells.
- Wilting diminishes the transpiration, if the wilting occurs permanently it may cause death to plants because of wilting, the growth of the plants also ceases.

Hence, the correct answer is option (A).

Note: Even though plants experience wilting, some part of it is recovered during night time, as night stomata close and evaporation reduces, in some woody plants, wilting may result in the cavitation of xylem.