permaculture

[Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>]

https://news.rutgers.edu/how-plants-harness-microbes-get-nutrients/20180917?fbclid=IwAR2YKh9gyE1tc5or9wHY6TmKMVp6sUo0qJFLowVS8G-f8FVZ3WEZAvletmQ#.W-jPKKKazKf
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How Plants Harness Microbes to Get Nutrients
Rutgers-led study could lead to enhanced crop growth, fewer weeds and lower
fertilizer and herbicide use
By Todd B. Bates
October 10, 2018
The root of *Phragmites australis* - "giant reed grass" - with a cloud of
bacteria around the root tip where bacteria enter root cells.
Photo: Professor James F. White Jr./Rutgers University-New Brunswick
High Res
<https://news.rutgers.edu/sites/medrel/files/inline-img/highres/Microbesno%20butyrate-11.jpg>
Media Contact
Todd Bates
848-932-0550
todd.bates@rutgers.edu
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A Rutgers-led team has discovered how plants harness microbes in soil to
get nutrients, a process that could be exploited to boost crop growth,
fight weeds and slash the use of polluting fertilizers and herbicides.

In a process the team has named the “rhizophagy cycle” (rhizophagy means
root eating), bacteria and fungi cycle between a free-living phase in the
soil and a plant-dependent phase within cells of plant roots. Microbes
obtain nutrients (nitrogen and minerals) in soil, and nutrients are
extracted from microbes in the cells of plant roots. Research aimed at
combatting *Phragmites australis
<https://plants.usda.gov/core/profile?symbol=phau7>*, a tall invasive reed
found in wetlands in New Jersey and elsewhere, led to a study published
online today in *Microorganisms* <http://www.mdpi.com/2076-2607/6/3/95>.
Co-authors include scientists at Banaras Hindu University in India and the
U.S. Geological Survey.

“The rhizophagy cycle appears to occur in all plants and may be an
important way plants acquire some nutrients,” said lead author James F.
White Jr. <https://plantbiology.rutgers.edu/faculty/white/james_white.html>,
a professor in the Department of Plant Biology
<https://plantbiology.rutgers.edu/> at Rutgers University–New Brunswick
<https://newbrunswick.rutgers.edu/>. “The discovery that plants actively
cultivate and then extract nutrients from symbiotic microbes is new.”

“The 50 or so species of plants examined so far show evidence that they
engage in rhizophagy. Some of the microbes involved in the rhizophagy cycle
increase growth of their particular host plants, but inhibit growth of
other species of plants,” White said.

The rhizophagy cycle works like this: plants cultivate – essentially farm –
microbes around root tips by secreting sugars, proteins and vitamins,
according to White. The microbes grow and then enter root cells at the
tips, where cells are dividing and lack hardened walls. The microbes lose
their cell walls, become trapped in plant cells, and are hit with reactive
oxygen (superoxide). The reactive oxygen breaks down some of the microbe
cells, effectively extracting nutrients from them. Surviving microbes spur
the formation of root hairs on roots. The microbes leave the hairs at the
growing hair tip, where the hair cell wall is soft, and microbes reform
their cell walls as they reenter soil. The microbes acquire nutrients in
the soil and the process is repeated over and over, according to White, who
has been studying the sustainable cycle for seven years.

“People have speculated that plants can get nutrients from microbes, but
mechanisms for transfer of nutrients from microbes to plants have been
elusive – until now,” he said. “Understanding how this process works may
allow us to grow plants without fertilizers or with minimal fertilizers and
without herbicides. We can manipulate the system to increase the growth of
desirable plants and decrease the growth of undesirable plants, potentially
using the same microbes.”