Plants share a root signal that boosts neighbors' growth via soil microbes
Bellucci M, Mostofa MG, Benucci GMN, Kabir AH, Khan I
Plant Signaling
Garden beds aren't isolated slots for individual plants; the volatile chemicals one plant releases into the soil can recruit beneficial microbes that spill over to its neighbors, meaning companion planting may work partly through chemistry happening underground.
Some plants release a gas called isoprene from their leaves, and scientists wondered whether that gas also does something in the soil. When they grew tobacco plants that emit isoprene next to normal tobacco plants, the normal plants grew bigger, and both had more beneficial microbes living around their roots. The catch: pumping isoprene through soil with no plants in it didn't change the microbes at all, so the plant and its root community have to be present for the effect to kick in.
Key Findings
Non-emitting plants co-cultivated with isoprene-emitting neighbors showed increased shoot and root biomass compared to controls grown without emitting neighbors.
Amplicon sequencing detected significantly more growth-promoting bacterial and fungal microbiota in the roots and rhizosphere of isoprene-emitting plants than in non-emitting controls.
Fumigating plant-free soil with isoprene alone failed to replicate microbiome shifts, indicating that active plant-microbe interactions are required for isoprene to modulate microbial community assembly.
chevron_right Technical Summary
Tobacco plants engineered to emit isoprene, a common plant gas, reshape the community of beneficial soil microbes around their roots. Neighboring plants growing nearby gained more biomass, suggesting isoprene acts as a belowground signal that recruits growth-promoting microbes benefiting the whole plant community.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
Isoprene-Emitting Transgenic Tobacco Shapes Root Microbiome and Enhances Growth of Co-Cultivated Non-Emitting Plants.
Isoprene is the most abundant biogenic volatile organic compound emitted by terrestrial vegetation. Here we report the impact of isoprene on root-associated microbiomes. Using isoprene-emitting (IE...
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