Silicon: its manifold roles in plants

Abstract The title of this essay declares that silicon does have roles in plants and all participants in this conference know that that is so. This knowledge, however, is not shared by the general community of plant biologists, who largely ignore the element. This baffling contrast is based on two sets of experience. First, higher plants can grow to maturity in nutrient solutions formulated without silicon. That has led to the conventional wisdom that silicon is not an essential element, or nutrient, and thus can be disregarded. Second, the world's plants do not grow in the benign environment of solution culture in plant biological research establishments. They grow in the field, under conditions that are…