英国诺丁汉大学Malcolm J. Bennett和上海交通大学张大兵研究组组合租取得最新进展。他们发现植物根系通过限制乙烯扩散来感知土壤压实。相关论文发表在2021年1月15日出版的《科学》杂志上。

他们报告说，挥发性激素乙烯会主动抑制压实土壤中的根生长。他们发现对乙烯不敏感的突变拟南芥和水稻根部比野生型根部更有效地渗透到土壤中。 他们的结果表明，土壤压实通过减少空气填充的孔隙而降低了气体扩散，从而导致乙烯在根部组织中积累并触发激素反应，从而限制了生长。

他们建议乙烯作为根系的早期预警信号，以避免土壤被压实，这与研究对土壤压实具有抵抗力的农作物的育种有关。

据了解，土壤压实是现代农业的一项重大挑战。直觉上认为压实通过限制根部穿透较硬土壤的能力来减少根部生长。

附：英文原文

Title: Plant roots sense soil compaction through restricted ethylene diffusion

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

Issue&Volume: 2021/01/15

Abstract: 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.

DOI: 10.1126/science.abf3013

Source: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/371/6526/276