How Plants Worked….A Look Back at 2015 – March

Three Beauties (CC BY-SA 2.0) by Dennis Jarvis

From Explaining Terroir to Hacking Photosynthesis

Looking back at the plant news from March 2015, I noticed a couple of recurring themes: how environmental microbes affect plants and how plants affect the environment.

Perhaps the most intriguing report was how soil microbes may be a significant factor in determining a specific habitat’s “terroir”, that is, how a specific location or habitat affects the characteristics of the plants growing there.

Indeed, no plant is an island. That is, microbes, herbivores, as well as adjacent plants, all may produce chemicals that affect a plant’s development and physiology.

Conversely, plants may also exude chemicals that affect the environment around them. A study published in March 2015 (see below) revealed to what degree plant defensive compounds may affect aquatic ecosystems.

Plants, like animals, get sick. But also like animals, plants have ways to defend themselves against pathogens. (Please see a previous post regarding plants’ “immune system”.)

Though mammalian immune systems are much more sophisticated compared to plants, new evidence suggests that there may be some similarities.

The main challenge to agriculture in the 21st-century is how to feed an increasing population in the face of global climate change. One way may be to significantly boost photosynthesis in crop plants. But how?