. 2023 Apr 16;12(8):1666. doi: 10.3390/plants12081666

Table 3.

Effects of various abiotic stress factors on quantitative ultrastructural characteristics of plant model systems.

Compartment/Plant Organ	Abiotic Factor	Plant Species	Cell Effects	Reference
Leaf—mesophyll cells	Chilling (2.5–4 °C in the dark and 3.2–4 °C in the light for 72 h)	Arabidopsis thaliana (Col 0)	Increased average area per chloroplast in cell sections	[160]
			Reduced chloroplast size
			Significantly higher abundance of ring-shaped and other morphologically aberrant mitochondria
Leaf—mesophyll cells	Drought (induced by slowly decreasing the amount of supplied water over a time period of 4 weeks)	Spinacia oleracea L. cv. Matador	Increased absolute total volume and surface area of chloroplasts	[188]
			Increased volume of stroma and thylakoids, and increased thylakoid surface area in chloroplasts
			Lack of starch grains
			Decreased mean volume and surface area of mitochondria
Leaf—mesophyll cells	Chilling (18 °C during day and 8 °C during night for four weeks)	Zea mays L.	Suppressed development of the system of thylakoids, and decreased volume and surface density of all thylakoids in the chloroplasts	[189]
Leaf—mesophyll cells		Zea mays L.	Decreased volume and surface density of intergranal thylakoids in chloroplasts	[189]
Leaf—mesophyll cells	Drought (induced by withholding watering for 7 days)	Triticum aestivum L.	Increased proportion of spherical and oval-shaped mitochondria	[190]
			Increased mean size of mitochondria
			Decreased relative cell area occupied by mitochondria in the drought-sensitive varieties
Leaf—mesophyll cells	Drought (induced by withholding watering for 7 days)	Triticum aestivum L. (drought-sensitive variety)	Increased size of chloroplasts, mitochondria, and plastoglobules	[191]
			Increased number of chloroplasts and plastoglobules per 100 µm² visible field
			Decreased number of mitochondria per 100 µm² visible field
	High temperature (40 °C for 5 h)		Increased size of chloroplasts, mitochondria, and plastoglobules
	High temperature (40 °C for 5 h)		Increased number of chloroplasts and mitochondria per 100 µm² visible field
	Drought + high temperature		Increased size of chloroplasts, mitochondria, and plastoglobules
	Drought + high temperature		Increased number of chloroplasts, mitochondria, and plastoglobules per 100 µm² visible field
Apical layer of curds	Cold stress (8 °C for 10 days) and heat stress (40 °C for 4 h)	Brassica oleracea var. botrytis	No significant changes in mitochondrial number and mitochondrial area per field	[192]
Apical layer of curds		Brassica oleracea var. botrytis	Decreased mitochondrial number per field after stress (heat and cold) recovery	[192]
Leaf—mesophyll cells	Drought (simulated by 20% polyethylene glycol 6000 (−0.6 MPa) for 2 days)	Zea mays L.	No significant changes in the cell area occupied by chloroplasts and in the size and length-to-width ratio of chloroplasts in the drought-resistant line	[193]
Leaf—mesophyll cells		Zea mays L.	Significant reduction in the length-to-width ratios of chloroplasts and the cell area occupied by chloroplasts in drought-sensitive lines	[193]
Needle—mesophyll cells	Air CO₂	Picea abies L. Karst.	Increased number of chloroplasts per mesophyll volume (sampled systematically, uniformly, and randomly from the whole needle cross-section area)	[194]
	Air CO₂		Increased starch areal density and starch grain area in chloroplasts (sampled from both the whole needle cross-section area and from the first layer of mesophyll)
	Irradiance		Increased starch areal density and starch grain area in chloroplasts (sampled from both the whole needle cross-section area and from the first layer of mesophyll)