Abstracts |
Humans have been growing rice for thousands of years, but we have not been doing it alone this whole time. With over 7.6 billion mouths to feed on our hungry planet, would not you want to get as much help as possible when growing food? We can easily see caterpillars, such as the fall armyworm, eating rice leaves above ground, but there are also insects, like immature rice water weevils, feeding on the roots underground. So, who is the mysterious helper in these scenarios? Fungi! Rice plants are able to provide nutrition for themselves, but when they team up with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF), they can more efficiently obtain the building blocks needed to grow. From our results, we think that maybe AMF can help plants repair themselves following pest damage. This could lead to a reduction in pesticides used and, more importantly, more food for everyone to eat. |