Phosphorus Transport in Arabidopsis and Wheat: Emerging Strategies to Improve P Pool in Seeds

Abstract

Phosphorus (P) is an essential macronutrient for plants to complete their life cycle. P taken up from the soil by the roots is transported to the rest of the plant and ultimately stored in seeds. This stored P is used during germination to sustain the nutritional demands of the growing seedling in the absence of a developed root system. Nevertheless, P deficiency, an increasing global issue, greatly decreases the vigour of afflicted seeds. To combat P deficiency, current crop production methods rely on heavy P fertilizer application, an unsustainable practice in light of a speculated decrease in worldwide P stocks. Therefore, the overall goal in optimizing P usage for agricultural purposes is both to decrease our dependency on P fertilizers and enhance the P-use efficiency in plants. Achieving this goal requires a robust understanding of how plants regulate inorganic phosphate (Pi) transport, during vegetative growth as well as the reproductive stages of development. In this short review, we present the current knowledge on Pi transport in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana and apply the information towards the economically important cereal crop wheat. We highlight the importance of developing our knowledge on the regulation of these plants' P transport systems and P accumulation in seeds due to its involvement in maintaining their vigour and nutritional quality. We additionally discuss further discoveries in the subjects this review discusses substantiate this importance in their practical applications for practical food security and geopolitical applications.

Wheat Can Access Phosphorus From Algal Biomass as Quickly and Continuously as From Mineral Fertilizer

“…After 30 DAS, the relative growth rate changed for all plants, indicating that the plants changed their overall growth mode or maybe even entered a different developmental phase, which should be assessed in further experiments. The P values used for our calculations were literature-based and will need experimental verification in the future, because different varieties and growth conditions of mother plants influence the amount and quality of the seed storage in wheat (Kisko et al, 2018).…”

Cellular and Subcellular Phosphate Transport Machinery in Plants

“…In the event of Pi deficiency, one of the early responses includes lowering cytosolic Pi levels, resulting in transcriptional reprogramming, as well as Pi redistribution [ 8 ]. Plants are equipped with both low- and high-affinity Pi transporters that mediate Pi uptake and root-to-shoot transport [ 9 , 10 ] ( Figure 1 ). Furthermore, dedicated sets of transporters are known to facilitate Pi redistribution at tissue, cellular, and subcellular levels [ 3 , 6 , 10 ].…”

Plant Nutrient Dynamics in Stressful Environments: Needs Interfere with Burdens

“…Possibilities to increase phosphorus use efficiency in wheat and Arabidopsis were reviewed by Kisko et al [19]. The optimized use of phosphorus is highly relevant from an ecological (e.g., risk of eutrophication), as well as from an economical (e.g., fertilizer costs, quality of yield) point of view.…”

“…Such transport processes and their regulation allow an accumulation of nutrients in harvested vegetative [16] or reproductive plant parts [17,18]. The mobility of an element or of certain forms of an element in the phloem is crucial for redistribution processes within the plant [13,19,20]. Such redistribution processes are crucial for heavy metal homeostasis [21], hyperaccumulation [22], and toxicity [11].…”