Herbicides could weaken plant resistance – scientists

Herbicides could weaken plant resistance – scientists

Researchers at the Purdue University have discovered that using herbicides could possibly weaken plants’ resistance. Dr. Angus Murphy, a horticulture professor studied the movement of auxin which is a hormone that is essential for plant development.

The experiments showed that a protein named ABCB 4 which is responsible for moving the auxin in the cells could remove the hormone if given in a concentrated form.

"We knew that the protein took auxin up, but found that it switched to removing auxin when a threshold is reached," said Murphy, whose findings appeared in the early online version of
The Plant Journal. "It starts transporting the hormones out."

This mechanism is essential to the development of root hairs through which most of the water and minerals enter the plant. 2,4-D is synthetic herbicide for auxin and could have harmful consequences for the growth of plants according to scientists.  This
herbicide is largely used to kill the broadleaf weeds.

But ABCB4 is located on the root surface and can be switched into intake-only mode, disabling its ability to remove excess auxin from cells, before 2,4-D can be inactivated inside the plant. This results in shorter root hairs.

Testing of ACCB 4 on yeast, tobacco and human cells showed that this ingredient could locked into the uptake-only mode. Murphy said laboratory testing of ABCB4 in yeast, tobacco and human cells subjected to 2,4-D all showed that ABCB4 could be locked into
the uptake-only mode. The root hairs of mutant plants that had ABCB4 removed were not affected by application of 2,4-D.

The research was funded by the Department of Energy and Murphy and Peer partnered with the scientists of the Institute of Experimental Botany at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.

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Posted by Taimoor Tariq on Nov 30 2011. Filed under Sci-Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry