I blog this with great confidence after reading the previous blog on gas-mediated communication in plants. It had some link to my own thought process...Having some familiarity of research on plants, more particularly in the field of breeding for salt tolerance, I have this feeling that we condone aspects of plants that may be unrelated to genes or alleles, but may have some kind of an impact on its 'behaviour' or response to certain stresses.
Perhaps we are too engrossed and immersed in the established doctrines of plant behavior that our brain refuses to deviate from conventional thinking!
Have we ever thought about a simple solution to making a plant or crop salt/drought tolerant? I know the immediate and easy answer could be, 'just allow them to 'evolve' or select themselves after gradual exposure to stress'. But then, evolution and adjustment might take time! Though all the technologies that we use currently to 'breed' for salt tolerance have taken awful lot of time and money and resources (practically yielding no result), at least people would be happy that they have used some 'technology' and in the process gained some satisfaction in the form of publications.. That's why I was wondering if we can hasten the process of evolution for stress tolerance through means other than 'techno-fancy'.
There must be some way that plants 'communicate' with the environment, its own species and others. I feel plants also communicate to us, the 'the dominant species' and animals. One communication that they do with us and that we all would appreciate is the fragrance of flowers.. some enticing and others repelling. I just want to ask the question, whether plants have some mechanism to communicate stress. Yes, they do have, as we would have repeatedly read and heard through those innumerable number of pictures of gels that display molecular responses and pictures of plants that show visual symptoms. But beyond all these mundane scientific or unscientific redundancies relating to its 'self', do they communicate to their own species or relatives growing near them? And, is there any communication coming back from those species and relatives to help them tide over stress? I guess this question has not been asked as yet.
A simple solution to hasten the process of evolution of crops for salt tolerance, when examined properly and scientifically may lie in facilitating two-way communication by growing 'compassionate' or supportive salt tolerant plants or wild relatives alongside sensitive crop plants. Of course, we can delineate the molecular mechanism of 'compassionate' communication between plants and publish in high impact journals, if at all my hypothetical questions are tested experimentally. It is just simple to test at least....
Statutory warning: Use of colloquial words to describe my thoughts does not imply ignorance of scientific parlance! This is just a blog! If you tested my hypothesis and found some response, pl. inform!
