Book with abstracts from the COST Action 0905 meeting in ... - UMB

EFFECTS OF BIO-(PHYTO-, FUNGI) GENIC LIGAND ADDITION
TO SOIL LIQUOR ON SELECTIVE BIOFORTIFICATION
Stefan Franzle
Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences, IHI Zittau, Germany
Animals including ourselves have a broader array of essential elements than plants, and
plants take up elements using a very restricted set of carrier ligands (far less than involved
elements, even those essent. for plants), implying that nutrient transfer is not substratespecific.
Only for this reason herbivory can work at all, also delivering metals etc. not
needed by the food plants as such but it also implies the co-transfer and probable
resorption of unwanted elements, like Cd or Pb or REE, actinoid radionuclides. Research
into details of ligands accomplishing the transfer into a plant thus are required to improve
selectivity and, sometimes, quantities of uptake of nutrient (trace) metals and some nonmetals.
Many quite different soil organisms (plants, fungi, soil bacteria including
chemolithoautotrophs, earthworms, nematodes) are known to deliver organic (often N-
containing) ligands to the soil liquid, which bring about more or less selective uptake of
chemical elements from solid (mineral, metal-bearing organic) soil phases after
complexation/etching, sometimes to the advantage of one´s neighbor (mykorrhiza). Now,
that the chemical potential of metal ions in ecological surroundings (soil, water) can be
precisely estimated, both empirical and theoretical studies on corresponding ligand effects
– and thus the impact co-growing some selected kind of grass, fungus etc. has on
biofortification of essential vs. withholding toxic metals in some food or fodder plant – are
available which give a rationale for a simple strategy to achieve the ends of COST 905.