Plant metabolism plays a number of important roles in crop production. Not only does metabolism regulate how the plants absorb and use sunlight and nutrients, it can also aid in the plants' natural defense systems. There's no doubt that metabolism must be taken into account when developing new pesticides for use on commercial crops. Metabolomic studies can provide key insights into how plants are affected by chemical pesticides – and that's just one aspect of the issue. The situation can become complicated when plants are also exposed to the metabolites of the chemical – in simpler terms, chemical compounds can change when passed through another living organism, such as an insect.
ScienceDaily recently reported on a study which found new ways to study plant metabolism at an organ level. This research could assist the development and application of new pesticides and other chemical compounds. Here's a glimpse into what this new research has shown so far:
Biosynthesis in individual organs
According to ScienceDaily, researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology sought to identify which organs within tobacco flowers – Nicotiana attenuata – have distinct metabolic profiles and which secondary metabolites accumulate locally. Using computational metabolomics to analyze metabolite spectra, the researchers were able to accurately identify which were present in each organ of the plant. Specifically, they discovered that each part of the flower was highly specialized. In turn, this data indicated several candidate genes which may regulate secondary metabolism.
Director of the Department of Molecular Ecology at the Planck Institute, Ian Baldwin, quoted by ScienceDaily, said, "Plants modulate in a very sophisticated manner their accumulations of metabolites at tissue/organ levels. Elucidating how this is achieved is central if we are to understand how plants survive in nature."
More research is necessary to show just how this information can be used in the future of chemical synthesis, but it's an interesting new development in the field nevertheless.
Potential impacts on crop production
Understanding how plants metabolize pesticides is important because it could affect how people consume crops. Some metabolites have been found in human urine. And while such instances are mostly harmless, there is still much to be learned from studying plant metabolism in relation to pesticides. For example, a study published in Nature, for instance, showed that brassinosteroids, a plant hormone, can actually decrease residue of organophosphorus, organochlorine and carbamate pesticides – sometimes by as much as 70 percent. It's possible that gene silencing techniques could be used to promote further metabolism of man-made chemicals, further reducing the percentage of existent pesticide residue.
These two studies could provide avenues for decreasing the amount of chemical residue on plants that people and animals consume. Crop modification or chemical compound alteration could both potentially lower exposure to pesticides and their metabolites in the future. More studies and experimentation are necessary to determine the usefulness of such tactics.
