Managing water on plant leaf surfaces: roles and regulation of hydrophobicity.

Coordinated control of epidermal surface architecture and epicuticular wax biosynthesis regulates plant leaf hydrophobicity, with rice and lotus serving as key structural and genetic models.

• Why it matters: Surface water repellence is linked to pathogen defense, photosynthetic efficiency, and plant water balance, yet the structural and genetic mechanisms shaping it have only recently been clarified.
• What they did: This review synthesizes evidence on hierarchical determinants of hydrophobicity—epidermal roughness and wax crystal structures—and the molecular genetic pathways that build and tune them, emphasizing rice and lotus.
• The result: Mechanistic understanding of these processes clarifies how plants optimize hydrophobic traits to ecological conditions and supports conceptual and practical approaches to engineer leaf wettability for improved crop resilience.

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