A new discovery out of the University of California, Riverside has revealed an amazing new way for plants to communicate. Researchers have found that plants can transmit signals through a special type of sugar called sucrose, allowing them to control the growth of their own roots. This is the first time that plants have been seen to use a chemical signal to control their own development and could have far-reaching implications for sustainable agriculture and crop production.

This research team made this discovery by studying a small flowering plant known as Arabidopsis thaliana. They found that when the plant was exposed to a type of stress, it would start to release sucrose into the soil. This release of sucrose was then picked up by the roots of the plant and caused the roots to move in a certain direction or grow in a particular way.

This discovery is an exciting step forward in understanding how plants interact with their environment and could lead to new strategies for improving crop production. By better understanding how plants use sucrose to control their own growth, we could potentially develop ways to help plants grow more quickly or resist disease and pest pressures. This is an exciting finding and could help us to unlock more of the secrets of plant communication.

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source: Phys.org