Arbuscular mycorrhiza provides postanthesis benefits to maximize wheat grain yield and nitrogen concentration.
Zhou J, Huang B, Yang R, Berckx F, Gui H
Mycorrhizal Networks
The wheat flour in your pantry could one day come from crops that need less synthetic fertilizer because their roots are partnered with fungi doing the nutrient-lifting underground.
Farmers have always faced an annoying trade-off: grow more wheat, or grow more nutritious wheat — but rarely both at once. Scientists discovered that a specific type of underground fungus, which lives on wheat roots, can break this rule by helping the plant absorb more phosphorus and nitrogen after flowering. The trick only works in certain wheat varieties, and the fungi rely on a bustling community of soil bacteria around their thread-like networks to pull it off.
Key Findings
Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi boosted both grain yield (via increased grain weight) and grain nitrogen concentration in wheat — overcoming the typical yield-protein trade-off — but only in varieties with high nitrogen conversion efficiency.
The fungi improved postanthesis (post-flowering) photosynthesis by enhancing phosphorus uptake, while simultaneously stimulating nitrogen uptake and assimilation during the same critical window.
The dual benefit depended on increased carbon allocation to roots after flowering, which sustained fungal hyphal networks and reshaped the surrounding bacterial community to increase soil nutrient availability.
chevron_right Technical Summary
Soil fungi called arbuscular mycorrhizae can simultaneously boost wheat grain yield and protein content — a combination farmers have long struggled to achieve — but only in wheat varieties that efficiently convert nitrogen into grain.
Abstract Preview
A trade-off between high grain yield and high protein (or nitrogen, N) concentration is frequently observed for crop plants in agroecosystems and is difficult to resolve using conventional agricult...
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