Fri. Mar 29th, 2024

With the help of the right microbes, plants growth can be drastically improved. A new study done by University of California claims that the plant, Acmispon strigosus– a member of the pea family- showed a 13-fold increase in growth when it was paired with a highly effective strain of a nitrogen fixing bacteria known as Bradyrhizobium.

Agronomists now believe that if further research is done for understanding the traits that help crops work with the top-performing microbes is the key to sustainable agriculture. The problem with capitalizing this beneficial affect of microbes is that the genetic and environmental factors that are involved in this process are extremely complex.

When plants aren’t attended to properly, they often fail to employ the beneficial microbes for their growth and instead surround themselves with both helpful but also ineffective bacteria. Scientists often fail to manage microbial populations and in incorporating more beneficial strains in the soil.

“It is very difficult to predict which combinations of microbes will be successful under field conditions, since the microbes that are beneficial to plants in the lab do not always compete successfully against microbes that already exist in the field,” said Joel Sachs, who is a professor of evolutionary ecology at the University of California, Riverside and also a member of the UC Institute for Integrative Genome Biology. “A promising alternative is to breed plants that are better at managing their own microbial partners, an advancement that will be passed down to future generations.”

The study was published recently in the journal New Phytologist and talks about the effects of plant genetics and environmental factors on the microbial population of the soil. The research team investigated how Acmispon strigosus connects with different strains of nitrogen-fixing bacteria when the environment around it changes.

They found that it is actually the genetic variation between the plants that plays the most important role in explaining the relationship of plant growth with the microbe population, the team also found that some variants of the plant work better than others.

“The fact that the traits that govern these partnerships vary between plants of the same species and are heritable shows that they can be selected for by breeders,” said Camille Wendlandt, who is the first author of the paper. “Ultimately, we hope that agronomists will use this research to develop plant varieties that make the most of the soil microbes they encounter. This could reduce reliance on chemical fertilizers, which are expensive for growers and can pollute the environment.”

By Purnima

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