This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: What helps plants cope better with drought? With heat waves and periods of extreme drought becoming increasingly common worldwide, the need for drought-tolerant plants is increasingly urgent.
With the help of bacteria, plants can unlock traits that help them cope with drought, securing biodiversity and food safety. Researchers at Leiden University have identified a beneficial bacterium that helps plants tolerate drought. While similar effects have been reported before, the team and its collaborators went a step further by uncovering the biological mechanism behind it.
The study brought together researchers from different disciplines and institutions, with first author Arezoo Rahimi at the forefront of the work and second author Sofia Stiegert making important contributions to the project. The findings are published in the journal Nature Plants. "We discovered a Flavobacterium that improves drought tolerance in plants," says plant biologist Salma Balazadeh.
"We also uncovered one way the bacterium helps the plant." The team found that the bacterium causes plant roots to grow more hairs. The discovery started with a collection of bacterial strains provided by Jos Raaijmakers, professor of microbial interactions and diversity at the Leiden Institute of Biology (IBL) and the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW). Researchers exposed plants to drought conditions and compared plants treated with bacteria with those that had not been treated.
"We screened a collection of bacteria to see which ones improved plant drought tolerance," Balazadeh says. "This strain was one of the most promising, so we decided to investigate it further." The project brought together expertise from plant biology, microbiology and molecular biology. To understand what the bacterium was doing, the researchers looked closely at plant roots.
In transparent growth systems, they noticed that plants exposed to the bacterium developed many more root hairs. Root hairs are tiny extensions of root cells. They increase the root's surface area, helping plants absorb water and nutrients from the soil.
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