Forget everything you know about plant hormone production.
That’s because a recent discovery that arose from UFV biochemist Dr. Harley Gordon and his team working with salicylic acid has introduced an entirely new method of phytohormone synthesis in plants.
Although this might not sound like a particularly exciting scientific advancement to the average person, it actually has massive implications due to the role that salicylic acid plays in plant health.
This hormone is what allows a plant to react to environmental stress factors like bacteria or insects. It is one of the six major hormones that regulate growth.
“Plants, like humans, rely on hormones to do all sorts of things,” said Gordon.
“Plants are sessile, which means they cannot run away when they are exposed to stressors. During stressful times, such as drought, being eaten by animals, or frost, they often experience spikes in certain hormone concentrations, and that can cause changes in their biochemistry as the plant is trying to adapt or defend itself from damage.”
The majority of plant-related studies done involve Arabidopsis, which most people might know as thale cress, and Gordon’s research was no different. However, this revealed an important and surprising thing about Arabidopsis and its relationship to salicylic acid.
“Prior to our work, what we did know about salicylic acid synthesis relied on Arabidopsis literature,” said Gordon.
“It turns out they are weird, an anomaly. Arabidopsis plants have lost the ability to synthesize salicylic acid in the way that most plants do.”
Gordon said that this revelation meant that a lot of the previous research on this subject matter had been tainted due to the fact that most prior and current studies have used Arabidopsis plants.
This is a crucial piece of information, as it will change how scientists can improve stress tolerance among crops and fruit-bearing plants.
Improving knowledge about salicylic acid production has other serious implications for humans as well, since it is part of the extracts that have a long history of being used in pain relief medicine for people.
According to UFV, the discovery from Gordon and his team has already been confirmed by two other papers that made similar revelations simultaneously.