Plant physiologists have discovered that the shallow rooted plant Helianthemum squamatum, derives up to 90% of its fluid requirements from crystallization water trapped in gypsum rock. The finding represents a completely new kind of water source for life.
The team of researchers, led by primary author Dr. Sara Palacio of the Instituto Pirenaico de Ecología in Spain, and senior author Dr. Juan Pedro Ferrio of the University of Lleida exploited differences in gypsum water and free soil water. The two kinds of water differ in their amounts of hydrogen and oxygen isotopes. By comparing the isotopic composition of the sap water of H. squamatum to the composition of the other two waters, the researchers could infer whether crystallization water locked in gypsum contributes to plant survival.
The researchers found that in both spring and summer, the sap water was closer to water from gypsum in terms of its isotope composition. However the similarity became more pronounced during the summer, with calculations showing that 70% to 90% of the sap water was from gypsum. In the spring, the balance was more even between the two sources. The free soil water was extracted and sampled from the top 10cm of the soil.
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The authors considered several alternative hypotheses that the sap water was really sourced from soil but underwent changes isotopically so as to cause its resemblance to gypsum-held crystallized water. However, they eliminated both scenarios, the first being a root-associated fungus mycorrhyza possibly causing isotopic fractionation, and the second being that evaporative processes in the stem where the sample was taken might have caused isotope filtering.
Because gypsum is found on Mars as well, the authors suggest that the field of exobiology might consider this an interesting finding because life without other readily available traditional sources of water could yet thrive on more cryptic sources such as crystallized water in rock.