A new study reveals zinc’s critical role in regulating nitrogen fixation in legumes through a sensor named FUN. This discovery could help improve crop efficiencies and reduce synthetic fertilizer use by adapting to environmental and soil conditions.
Climate change, drought, increased temperature, and other stressors challenge agricultural sustainability. Researchers have now made an unexpected discovery: zinc plays a pivotal role in the plant response to abiotic stress. This groundbreaking discovery not only sheds light on the intricate mechanisms of plant growth but also holds promise for revolutionizing crop resilience, especially in legume-based agriculture.
“It’s truly remarkable to discover zinc’s role as a secondary signal in plants. It is a vital micronutrient, and it has never been considered as a signal before. After screening over 150,000 plants, we finally identified the zinc sensor FUN, shedding light on this fascinating aspect of plant biology,” Assistant Professor Jieshun Lin, the study’s first author, explains.
From an agricultural perspective, continued nitrogen fixation could be a beneficial trait that increases nitrogen availability, both for the legume and for co-cultivated or future crops that rely on the nitrogen left in the soil after legumes are grown. This helps lay the foundations for future research that provides new ways for us to manage our farming systems and reduce the use of nitrogen fertilizer and reduce its impact on the environment.The implications of this research are significant.
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