March 17, 2007

Self defense - plant department

Interesting article on plants own self-defense against other plants and how it might be used in agriculture. From Science News Online:
Herbal Herbicides
Weed killers manufactured by Mother Nature

Certain plants are picky about the company they keep. Once established, walnuts and some sandy shrubs, for instance, create a virtually barren border of ground around them. Many other plants aren't quite so antisocial. They permit numerous species into their neighborhoods, while barring a few plant types.

Chemical defenses play a major role in determining which plants flourish in woodlands, meadows, farms—or even in suburban lawns. Although this herbal warfare has been recognized since Biblical times, its study is "still regarded as a relatively young and immature field of science," notes Yoshiharu Fujii of Japan's National Institute for Agro-Environmental Sciences in Tsukuba.

Only in the past few decades have scientists focused on the chemical warfare underlying botanical standoffishness. They've demonstrated that many plants manufacture compounds that sicken or kill intruders.

The potential payoff from influencing this defense is huge, notes Alan R. Putnam, a retired Michigan State University horticulturist who spent 18 years studying allelopathy, or plants' chemical defenses against other plants. By inhibiting crop growth, "allelochemicals undoubtedly cost world agriculture billions of dollars annually," he says. By understanding chemical-defense mechanisms, he argues, "we could put them to work to benefit agriculture."
It then goes on to list some specific examples -- very cool in that they can either manufacture the chemical that the plants are using or they can tailor one plant to express the chemical of another and thereby give it the same powers. Cut way down on synthetic chemicals-based herbicides. Posted by DaveH at March 17, 2007 4:33 PM | TrackBack