Nitric oxide research in agriculture: Bridging the plant and bacterial realms

Abstract

Organisms produce and respond to membrane-diffusible nitric oxide (NO) for a multitude of regulatory and defensive purposes. Bacteria establish intimate associations with plants and therefore NO metabolism by one organism can influence the physiology of the other. In plants, NO increases the bioavailability of iron and stimulates systemic pathogen defense pathways. Evidence provided by recent studies and reinterpretation of older published results implicates bacterial-derived NO in the modulation of these plant activities. Exploiting NO to benefit crop plants through manipulation of plant-associated bacterial communities presents agriculturalists with an ecologically-based alternative to genetic engineering of NO networks in plants. © 2006 Springer. All Rights Reserved.