Skip to main content

Research Repository

Advanced Search

Plant roots sense soil compaction through restricted ethylene diffusion

Pandey, Bipin K.; Huang, Guoqiang; Bhosale, Rahul; Hartman, Sjon; Sturrock, Craig J.; Jose, Lottie; Martin, Olivier C.; Karady, Michal; Voesenek, Laurentius A. C. J.; Ljung, Karin; Lynch, Jonathan P.; Brown, Kathleen M.; Whalley, William R.; Mooney, Sacha J.; Zhang, Dabing; Bennett, Malcolm J.

Plant roots sense soil compaction through restricted ethylene diffusion Thumbnail


Authors

Guoqiang Huang

Sjon Hartman

Lottie Jose

Olivier C. Martin

Michal Karady

Laurentius A. C. J. Voesenek

Karin Ljung

Jonathan P. Lynch

Kathleen M. Brown

William R. Whalley

SACHA MOONEY sacha.mooney@nottingham.ac.uk
Professor of Soil Physics

Dabing Zhang



Abstract

© 2021 The Authors, some rights reserved. Soil compaction represents a major challenge for modern agriculture. Compaction is intuitively thought to reduce root growth by limiting the ability of roots to penetrate harder soils. We report that root growth in compacted soil is instead actively suppressed by the volatile hormone ethylene. We found that mutant Arabidopsis and rice roots that were insensitive to ethylene penetrated compacted soil more effectively than did wild-type roots. Our results indicate that soil compaction lowers gas diffusion through a reduction in air-filled pores, thereby causing ethylene to accumulate in root tissues and trigger hormone responses that restrict growth. We propose that ethylene acts as an early warning signal for roots to avoid compacted soils, which would be relevant to research into the breeding of crops resilient to soil compaction.

Citation

Pandey, B. K., Huang, G., Bhosale, R., Hartman, S., Sturrock, C. J., Jose, L., …Bennett, M. J. (2021). Plant roots sense soil compaction through restricted ethylene diffusion. Science, 371(6526), 276-280. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abf3013

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Dec 8, 2020
Online Publication Date Jan 15, 2021
Publication Date Jan 15, 2021
Deposit Date Jan 18, 2021
Publicly Available Date Jan 29, 2021
Journal Science
Print ISSN 0036-8075
Electronic ISSN 1095-9203
Publisher American Association for the Advancement of Science
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 371
Issue 6526
Pages 276-280
DOI https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abf3013
Public URL https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/5234573
Publisher URL https://science.sciencemag.org/content/371/6526/276
Additional Information This is the author’s version of the work. It is posted here by permission of the AAAS for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Science on 15/01/2021 Vol. 371 15th January 2021], DOI: 10.1126/science.abf3013

Files





You might also like



Downloadable Citations