There are several reasons why plants wilt. Some of them are over-watering, lack of water, too much sun, not enough sun, too many/much fertilizers, diseases caused by infection, etc. Wilt due to lack of water or other environmental factors generally occurs gradually and hence, the cause of those can be studied and accordingly it can be controlled by devising appropriate management strategies. Moreover, plants recover with appropriate control measures and continue to yield. In this review, we discuss a typical wilt which is sudden and occurs within a few hours. Hence, understanding the cause and devising a control measure are difficult. Its sporadic distribution and untimely occurrence further complicate the effort to find the cause of this wilt. Unlike the wilt mentioned above which occurs due to lack of water, sudden wilt occurs when the soil is suddenly saturated by a downpour of rain and the sun later shines bright and hot. Paradoxically, the physiological responses, i.e. wilt symptoms to those induced by either drought or flooding are similar. However, the causal mechanism is different. Here, we demonstrate that the imbalance in uptake and loss of water under flooding is the cause of sudden/parawilt of cotton. We also discuss how plants with rapid growth rate and climate factors like bright sunshine and high temperature accentuate the problem of parawilt in cotton.
