Answer: Have you ever forgotten to water a plant for a few days, then come back to find your once-perky arugula a wilted mess? If so, you already know that water balance is very important for plants. When a plant wilts, it does so because water moves out of its cells, causing them to lose the internal pressure—called turgor pressure—that normally supports the plant.
Why does water leave the cells? The amount of water outside the cells drops as the plant loses water, but the same quantity of ions and other particles remains in the space outside the cells. This increase in solute, or dissolved particle, concentration pulls the water out of the cells and into the extracellular spaces in a process known as osmosis.
Formally, osmosis is the net movement of water across a semipermeable membrane from an area of lower solute concentration to an area of higher solute concentration. This may sound odd at first, since we usually talk about the diffusion of solutes that are dissolved in water, not about the movement of water itself. However, osmosis is important in many biological processes, and it often takes place at the same time that solutes diffuse or are transported. Here, we’ll look in more detail at how osmosis works, as well as the role it plays in the water balance of cells.
