nutrient-manipulation
Nutrient manipulation involves deliberately altering the availability, composition, or delivery of essential mineral elements to plants in order to study uptake, metabolism, and physiological responses. By controlling nutrient inputs, researchers can dissect how plants sense and adapt to changing soil conditions, revealing key regulatory pathways governing growth and yield. This approach underpins advances in crop improvement, sustainable agriculture, and our understanding of plant resilience under nutrient-limited environments.
PubMed · 2026-04-01
Fungal diseases devastate food crops by manipulating nutrients — starving plants of carbohydrates and phosphate to weaken their defenses. New research reveals the molecular tricks fungi use and how plants fight back, opening doors to better crop protection strategies.
A newly discovered plant defense system actively triggers carbohydrate starvation in infected tissue to cut off sugar access to the head smut fungus (Sporisorium reilianum) attacking corn.
Rice blast fungus (Magnaporthe oryzae) deploys a novel class of effector proteins with Nudix hydrolase activity that causes phosphate deficiency inside host plants, directly impairing plant immune responses.
The plant hormones strigolactone and methyl jasmonate were found to influence phosphate and carbon metabolism in fungi, suggesting plants may use hormonal signals as an additional front in nutritional warfare.
