Plants sustain the terrestrial silicon cycle during ecosystem retrogression

There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

Abstract

The biogeochemical silicon cycle influences global primary productivity and carbon cycling, yet changes in silicon sources and cycling during long-term development of terrestrial ecosystems remain poorly understood. Here, we show that terrestrial silicon cycling shifts from pedological to biological control during long-term ecosystem development along 2-million-year soil chronosequences in Western Australia. Silicon availability is determined by pedogenic silicon in young soils and recycling of plant-derived silicon in old soils as pedogenic pools become depleted. Unlike concentrations of major nutrients, which decline markedly in strongly weathered soils, foliar silicon concentrations increase continuously as soils age. Our findings show that the retention of silicon by plants during ecosystem retrogression sustains its terrestrial cycling, suggesting important plant benefits associated with this element in nutrient-poor environments.

Related collections

Most cited references 34

Record: found
Abstract: not found
Article: not found

Iron Oxide Removal from Soils and Clays by a Dithionite-Citrate System Buffered with Sodium Bicarbonate

O. Mehra (1958)

0 comments Cited 279 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

Record: found
Abstract: not found
Article: not found

Silicon: its manifold roles in plants

Nancy E. Epstein (2009)

0 comments Cited 140 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: not found

Silicon's Role in Abiotic and Biotic Plant Stresses.

Daniel Debona, Fabrício Á. Rodrigues, Lawrence E Datnoff (2017)

Silicon (Si) plays a pivotal role in the nutritional status of a wide variety of monocot and dicot plant species and helps them, whether direct or indirectly, counteract abiotic and/or biotic stresses. In general, plants with a high root or shoot Si concentration are less prone to suffer from pest attack and exhibit enhanced tolerance to abiotic stresses such as drought, low temperature, or metal toxicity. However, the most notable effect of Si is the reduction in the intensities of a number of seedborne, soilborne, and foliar diseases in many economically important crops that are caused by biotrophic, hemibiotrophic, and necrotrophic plant pathogens. The reduction in disease symptom expression is due to the effect of Si on some components of host resistance, including incubation period, lesion size, and lesion number. The mechanical barrier formed by the polymerization of Si beneath the cuticle and in the cell walls was the first proposed hypothesis to explain how this element reduced the severity of plant diseases. However, new insights have revealed that many plant species supplied with Si have the phenylpropanoid and terpenoid pathways potentiated and have a faster and stronger transcription of host defense genes and higher activities of defense enzymes. Photosynthesis and the antioxidant metabolism involved in the removal of reactive oxygen species are improved for Si-supplied plants. Although the current understanding of how this overlooked element affects plants against pathogen infections, pest attacks, and abiotic stresses has advanced, the exact mechanism(s) by which it modulates plant physiology through the potentiation of host defense mechanisms still needs further investigation at the genomic, metabolomic, and proteomic levels. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Phytopathology Volume 55 is August 4, 2017. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.