A groundbreaking fertilizer has been developed that allows crops to grow normally on poorly alkaline soils, which occupy about one-third of the world's land.Tokushima University, Aichi Steel Co., Ltd., Ishikawa Prefectural University, The University of Tokyo, Hokkaido University, Suntory Foundation for Life Sciences, etc. have achieved this through joint research.
In poorly alkaline soil, iron exists as iron hydroxide that is insoluble in water, so plants cannot absorb iron from the roots, causing iron deficiency and withering.In order to enable farming in poorly alkaline soil, an iron chelating agent that dissolves iron hydroxide in the soil is required, but existing iron chelating agents have not been sufficiently effective.
On the other hand, it is known that gramineous plants can secrete a natural iron chelating substance called mugineic acid from the roots and efficiently absorb iron.In this research, we developed "proline deoxymugineic acid (PDMA)", which has an improved chemical structure based on this mugineic acid, and evaluated its performance. It has been found to be useful as a gentle next-generation fertilizer.
PDMA was confirmed to be effective not only in rice but also in all grasses such as barley and barley in cell activity tests.In addition, while existing iron chelating agents remain in the soil and are concerned about the burden on the environment, PDMA is decomposed by microorganisms in the soil over a period of about one month, so it is environmentally friendly and long-term. It was found that it can be used as a fertilizer to maintain the effect.When a rice cultivation test using PDMA was actually conducted on poorly alkaline soil, PDMA showed an iron deficiency recovery effect that was about 1 times better than existing iron chelating agents, and it was possible to harvest rice. ..
It is clear that if PDMA can be used as a fertilizer to improve agricultural productivity in poorly alkaline soils that have been considered unsuitable for agriculture, it will have a tremendous effect on increasing global food production.It can be said that this is a result that is highly expected to be put into practical use as one of the means to solve the food shortage caused by the increase in the world population, which is expected to be visited in the future.
Paper information:[Nature Communications] Development of a mugineic acid family phytosiderophore analog as an iron fertilizer
