Scientists at the Salk Institute in La Jolla have started to develop growing amounts of research on how iron influences a plant's immunity.SAN DIEGO — Iron is an important mineral for human and plant health. New data is sprouting up on how iron influences a plant's immunity. "When plants are iron deficient, they produce a molecule and that is called Iron Man.
"Plants need iron for basically almost everything they do. When they are lush and green, they have a lot of iron that enables their photosynthesis. So, the ability to capture CO2 from the air, harness the sunlight and make biomaterials and grow with that and produce all the great stuff that we use food, feed and fiber," said Busch.
"Initially we thought they would actually get more iron and have more iron available when they were exposed to these microbial molecules, but they did the opposite, and that was the start of a fascinating story," stated Busch. "This is the iron deficiency. Plants are mining like crazy and that is indicated by a lot of this green signal. And then, when we do the same iron deficiency and add this bacteria molecule, we don't see a lot of green signals like the previous one. So plants shut down their own mining activity here because there is no green signal when they also have a lot of this bacteria molecule," explained Busch.