Many crops depend on phosphorus-based fertilizers and are threatened by herbicide-resistant weeds. Genetically modified plants that can digest an alternative phosphorus source that normally inhibits plant growth could solve both problems.
Damar López-Arredondo and Luis Herrera-Estrella at the National Polytechnic Institute's Centre for Research and Advanced Studies in Irapuato, Mexico, engineered the model plant Arabidopsis, and tobacco plants, to metabolize phosphite, in addition to the orthophosphate found in standard fertilizer. When phosphite was available, the transgenic plants needed 30–50% less phosphorus to generate the same amount of biomass as that produced in the presence of orthophosphate. The researchers also tested the transgenic plants against weeds. In the presence of orthophosphate, weeds dominated the transgenic plants, but with the addition of phosphite, transgenic tobacco plants easily outcompeted weeds (pictured).
Nature Biotechnol. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nbt.2346 (2012)
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Engineered plants can use phosphite. Nature 489, 181 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/489181d
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/489181d
