There’s a complex world beneath our feet, teeming with diverse and interdependent life. Plants call out with chemical signals in times of stress, summoning microbes that can unlock bound nutrients and find water in soil pores too small for the finest roots. In return, microbes get a safe place to live or a sugary drink.
It’s a classic you-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours scenario. Except when it’s not. New research from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign challenges conventional wisdom to show free-living soil microbes are just looking out for themselves.
In a multi-generation experiment, researchers from the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) found microbes helped plants cope with drought, but not in response to plants’ cries for help. Instead, the environment itself selected for drought-tolerant microbes. And while those hardy microbes were doing their thing, they just happened to make plants more drought-tolerant, too.
Source: eurekalert.org
Photo Credit: gettyimages-zhuda
Categories: Illinois, Crops, Weather