Phosphate: essential for food security and sustainable agriculture. Phosphate is essential for agriculture, but is a limiting, non-renewable resource. Much of the phosphate currently applied to crops as fertiliser is wasted and pollutes the environment before plants can absorb it. To promote food security and sustainable agriculture, it is paramount to better understand the mechanisms that control growth behaviour in response to low phosphate and to increase the efficiency with which crops assimilate and use phosphate.One important strategy of plants to increase their capacity to acquire phosphate is to alter the growth patterns of their root systems in low phosphate: We want to understand how this happens, so we can manipulate it to make root systems more efficient in nutrient uptake. We have started to identify key processes in root growth control in low phosphate that affect the activity of the root apical meristem, and are now aiming to further study these while also initiating transfer of this knowledge to crops. Wild-type Arabidopsis plants growing on media with adequate phosphate or lacking sufficient phosphate, respectively. The media is also low (but sufficient) in iron content to avoid the artifactual iron-dependent root growth inhibition observed in low phosphate when iron is supplied in excess. Growth attenuation can be seen in the decreasing growth intervals (marked by the white lines) close to the root tips on the right. This article was published on Tuesday 4 August 2026
