Strawberries ’Remember’ Heat and Other Stress

Symbolic picture 1 (Agroscope, Carole Parodi) No memory without a brain? That's not quite true, as shown by an Agroscope study of woodland strawberry: heat and other stress situations influence the DNA of the plants. The resulting changes can help forearm strawberries against subsequent stress situations - they -remember-. With ongoing climate change, plants are faced by stress situations more frequently and at shorter intervals: heat, drought, intense precipitation events, but also cold and altered soil salinity. All of this negatively impacts many plants, including some of our crops. Plants have developed various strategies to adapt to these changed conditions. One of these strategies involves altering their DNA. Stress alters plant DNA In the EU project -EpiDiverse-, Agroscope studies whether and how stress influences the DNA of woodland strawberry.