They discover how plants regulate their growth using nitrates in the soil, thereby reducing the need for fertilizers.
Researchers from CONICET, the Leloir Institute Foundation and the Institute of Physiological and Environmental Research Related to Agriculture (IFEVA) of the Department of Agronomy of the UBA have published an article in the Journal of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States that reveals the mechanism that regulates plant stem growth under conditions of high nitrate, an essential source of nutrients in agricultural soils. This discovery opens the door to growing more efficient crops at lower economic and environmental costs.
Excessive growth of plants can jeopardize yield as they can break or fall due to wind if they are too high or make the work of harvesters more difficult.
In a paper published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), researchers from CONICET of the Leloir Institute Foundation (FIL) and the Institute for Physiological and Environmental Research in Agriculture (IFEVA) of the UBA discovered the molecular mechanism that leads to this It is involved in controlling stem growth against varying concentrations of nitrate, an essential nutrient in agricultural soils. This discovery opens the door to more efficient crops.
Fertilizer technologies
“During the Green Revolution, technologies were introduced that significantly increased crop yields.
For example, dwarfing genes have been introduced into crops such as wheat and rice, creating dwarf specimens that do not fall over easily. A side effect of this development is that plants use soil nitrogen less efficiently.
To achieve the same effect, more fertilizer would have to be used, which entails higher economic and ecological costs.“, explained the agronomist and doctor of biological sciences Jorge Casal, head of the Environmental Sciences Department of the FIL Plant Molecular Physiology experiment and one of the heads of the FIL Plant Molecular Physiology laboratory, as well as one of the authors of the work.
Using the hypocotyl (early growing stem) of the plant Arabidospis thaliana As a model, Casal and his colleague Matías Ezequiel Pereira, first author of the article, and other collaborators determined how the plant strain responded to the presence of nitrate. “We compared what happened at high and low concentrations and found no difference in growth. However, when we increased the concentration of available nitrate, hypocotyl growth increasedsaid Pereira, also a researcher at FIL and IFEVA.
“A home may have an external thermal switch that controls all electrical power. The circuit can then be disconnected and locked out for each zone, and later one branch of the circuit can have device-specific thermocouples that can be cut to connect that device without affecting power to the rest of the circuit in the house. . The dwarf genes used so far are of a more general nature“, said the expert. “The dwarfism genes used so far are like more general keys,” noted the specialist. And he emphasized: “We have identified other genes called SAUR that control growth more specifically“.
The researchers also found that the PIF4 protein plays a central role in the expression of these genes in the face of elevated nitrate levels.
With this new information, scientists now hope to create dwarf crops that do not have low nitrogen use efficiency, thereby reducing fertilizer consumption. “We strive to maintain the benefits without any negative side effects“, concludes Casal.
Here is the study
With information from: