GROWING MORE from the seeds that fall on ‘stony ground’ could be the result of what is, literally, ground-breaking research carried out in the UK.

The plant genes which control the specialized ‘nutrient mining’ machine that develops on the surface of plant roots, has been identified by scientists at the John Innes Centre and at the University of Oxford. It’s thought the discovery could help develop crops that grow on extremely poor soils.

The research found that the root hairs (see picture for a microscopic view) which develop on roots, burrow into the soil, then release acids and other scouring chemicals to ‘crack’ rocky minerals, thus releasing valuable nutrients such as iron and phosphate that are necessary for plant growth.

It has long been known that when crops such as barley and wheat are grown on soils containing small amounts of phosphate, plants with longer root hairs give higher yields than those with short hairs. Similarly, long-haired beans grown on nutrient poor tropical soils of Central America do much better than short haired varieties.

The mechanism that controls the growth of these nutrient excavating cells has eluded scientists until now. But, this week, a group of UK-based scientists shed light on the mystery in a paper published in Nature Genetics.

They discovered that a master regulatory gene, called RSL4, acts like a switch – hair cells grow when the gene is turned on and growth stops when it is off. When plants grow in conditions where there is insufficient phosphate they develop very long root hairs. This increases the amount of soil from which they can scavenge phosphate.

The intellectual property rights in the root hair technology have been assigned to Plant Bioscience, the management and technology transfer company of the John Innes Centre.