plant-nutrient-uptake
Plant-nutrient uptake refers to the physiological and molecular processes by which roots absorb essential minerals and compounds—such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium—from the surrounding soil and transport them into plant tissues. This process is fundamental to plant growth, development, and stress resilience, as nutrient availability directly influences metabolic efficiency, crop yield, and ecosystem productivity. Understanding the transporters, signaling pathways, and root-microbe interactions involved helps researchers improve agricultural sustainability and develop crops better adapted to nutrient-poor or changing environmental conditions.
open_in_new WikipediaPubMed · 2026-07-02
Researchers used high-powered X-ray scanning to see, for the first time, the living fungal networks wrapped around plant roots inside undisturbed soil. They built a workflow to measure how these networks branch, grow, and occupy pore spaces, opening the door to understanding exactly how fungi ferry water and nutrients to plants.
Synchrotron micro-CT imaging successfully visualized arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal hyphae inside intact, undisturbed soil across two different soil textures without any physical disruption.
A quantitative 3D pipeline was developed to measure hyphal length, branching frequency, volume, surface area, and pore-space occupancy at the microscale.
The method also allows measurement of the contact area between fungal structures and both soil aggregates and plant roots, enabling direct linkage to nutrient and water transport models.