Plants were able to communicate their growing conditions to neighbors by transmitting chemical signals through the root system.
Plants don't like being constantly touched. For these immobile organisms, touch usually means too close proximity to another plant - and impending competition with it for sunlight. But they are able to exchange signals through the root system, changing the growth pattern of neighbors. Velemir Ninkovic and his colleagues from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences write about this in an article published in the journal PLoS One.
Biologists experimented with young sprouts of common corn, which were grown in hydroponic conditions, without soil - in an aqueous solution containing all the necessary minerals. These sprouts are sensitive to touch: mechanical stimulation caused them to release signaling substances into the water. And if the next plant was cultivated in the same solution, then it would grow more leaves and fewer roots.
The plant seemed to “feel” the presence of its neighbors and directed many resources to defeat them in the competition for light. If the sprout had access to two solutions at the same time (one left after the "touched" plant, and the other from the "untouched" plant), it obviously distinguished them, and the root was more actively drawn to the second.
According to the authors, the chemical communication of the shoots through the soil may be especially important for the seeds of the mother plant, allowing them to better “divide” the available space and compete less with each other for light. "Aboveground communications between plants are able to evoke a response in neighboring" untouched "plants through subsoil communications, - the scientists write. "This shows that the development of plants can change significantly due to the physical conditions in which their neighbors grow."
Sergey Vasiliev