Soil Study

Cellular Stress Management in People and Plants Proteins have many tasks to fulfil in the structure, function and regulation of cells. Once the proteins are formed, they are further adapted for their very specific jobs. "One of the most frequent changes is the attachment of an acetic acid residue on the amino-terminal end of the proteins. Lacking this modification, the plants cannot survive, and this same lack in certain proteins in humans leads to illness, developmental problems and cell death," explains Prof. Hell. Although up to 80 percent of proteins in the cytoplasm of human cells are modified by an acetic acid residue at their amino terminus, the function of this modification has only been studied for a handful of proteins. The Heidelberg researchers generated genetically modified plants with protein populations that carry less acetic acid residues and analyzed the results. "The changed pattern of amino-terminal modification proteins by acetic acid surpr...

Beneficial Natural Compounds in Tomato Scientists at the John Innes Centre have found a way to produce industrial quantities of useful natural compounds efficiently, by growing them in tomatoes. The compounds are phenylpropanoids like Resveratrol, the compound found in wine which has been reported to extend lifespan in animal studies, and Genistein, the compound found in soybean which has been suggested to play a role in prevention of steroid-hormone related cancers, particularly breast cancer. As a result of the research led by Dr Yang Zhang and Dr Eugenio Butelli working in Professor Cathie Martin's lab at the John Innes Centre, one tomato can produce the same quantity of Resveratrol as exists in 50 bottles of red wine. One tomato has also produced the amount of Genistein found in 2.5kg of tofu. Dr Zhang and Butelli have been studying the effect of a protein called AtMYB12 which is found in Arabidopsis thaliana, a plant found in most UK gardens and used as a mode...

Wild Plants Call to Carnivores to Get Rid of Pests While this strategy may work in someone's backyard, it's not an option on a large farm. In an October 4 Trends in Plant Science Opinion paper, agricultural researchers in Sweden and Mexico argue that one way around the scalability problem is to bring back the odors and nectars found in wild plants that attract pest-eating predators. This could be done either through breeding programs or by using artificial devices. "Wild plants commonly emit natural odors when they are damaged that attract natural enemies of pest insects--even as humans we smell it when our neighbour is mowing the lawn -- odors can carry very precise information," says co-author Martin Heil of CINVESTAV-Irapuato in Mexico. "Agriculture has bred such defenses out of crops, and since these odors have no negative effects on human consumers, we want to replace what the plant would already be doing." It's also not unusual for w...

Wheat Choice has Lasting Effect on Soil health and Yield Researchers at the John Innes Centre in Norwich and Rothamsted Research in Harpenden, examined the effects of growing high and low take-all building susceptible wheat on the make-up of the soil bacterial community associated with the second wheat crop. To their surprise, the impact on the soil from wheat grown in the first year of the experiment completely overrode any expected influence of the second year crop. They found that the variety of wheat grown in year one sets the scene in the soil and what is going on in the soil long after harvesting the initial wheat crop determines the subsequent year's root health and yield. Dr Jake Malone, of the John Innes Centre said: "We knew that plants and microbes in the soil interact in a multitude of ways but we didn't realize just what an impact growing different varieties of the same crop could have on the communities of microbes living in soil. We hope to ta...

Root Microbiome Engineering Improves Plant Growth Only a few published studies have looked at the effects of artificially selecting microbiomes. In their own labs, the authors--Ulrich Mueller of the University of Texas at Austin and Joel Sachs of the University of California, Riverside--have seen microbiome engineering to be successful with Arabidopsis (a close relative of cabbage and broccoli). In the Arabidopsis experiments, bacteria from the roots of the largest plants were harvested with a filter and given to other plants growing from seed. Over time, the plants, which were genetically identical and therefore could not evolve by themselves, grew better because of their evolved and improved microbiomes. "My hope is that others will become interested in optimizing methods in other systems," says Mueller. "For agricultural applications, I would start with artificial selection of root microbiomes in a greenhouse environment, using cash crops such as lettuce,...

Silicon 'Plant Stones' for Strong Rice Silicon quite literally pumps up the strength of a rice plant. Rice takes up Si with the soil solution and forms amorphous Si dioxide bodies within the plant tissue, the so-called phytoliths (literally translated "plant stones"). These phytoliths make the plant stem and leaves stronger and more rigid. Thus, a sufficient Si supply enhances the plants' resistance against heavy rain and wind and against attacks of pests and fungi. Undoubtedly, an indispensable element for sustainable rice production, the processes which control Si availability in the soil remain rather understudied. In their paper Anika Marxen from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research -- UFZ and her team study rice soils in Vietnam in order to understand these processes, providing scientific base for future recommendations for sustainable rice production. Silicon is contained in most soil minerals and mineral weathering slowly rel...