Single Root hair growth under constant force: insights into wall mechanics

Tip growth is a tightly regulated process that enables root hairs to explore their surroundings, enhancing plant development, particularly by improving nutrient uptake. While Lockhart's viscoplastic framework is widely used to describe this process, it has received limited experimental validation. By integrating optical microscopy with a custom microplate-based rheometer, we created a novel protocol to simultaneously measure, for individual growing root hairs, both the reduction in growth rate and the instantaneous compression in response to a step in applied axial force. The observed growth rate reduction aligns remarkably with a 1D Lockhart viscoplastic model, experimentally validating this framework in tip-growing cells. Additionally, the instantaneous compression upon force application provided an in situ estimate of turgor pressure. Together, these measurements allowed us to determine, for the first time in Arabidopsis root hairs, two critical parameters: the yield turgor pressure and cell wall viscosity. Our approach, including the technique, protocol, and analytical framework, can be readily adapted to other tip-growing species and diverse experimental conditions (e.g., varying nutrient availability or osmotic stress). This opens new opportunities to explore cell wall mechanosensitivity and its role in adapting tip growth to environmental signals.