Phosphate Nutrition: Improving Low-Phosphate Tolerance in Crops

Phosphorus is an essential nutrient that is required for all major developmental processes and reproduction in plants. It is also a major constituent of the fertilizers required to sustain high-yield agriculture. Levels of phosphate--the only form of phosphorus that can be assimilated by plants--are suboptimal in most natural and agricultural ecosystems, and when phosphate is applied as fertilizer in soils, it is rapidly immobilized owing to fixation and microbial activity. Thus, cultivated plants use only approximately 20-30% of the applied phosphate, and the rest is lost, eventually causing water eutrophication. Recent advances in the understanding of mechanisms by which wild and cultivated species adapt to…