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Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Vegetarian Ferns? Idaho State University researchers note simple plant species ‘consumes sugar’

ISU Headlines
Posted June 12, 2009

In a significant scientific paper soon to be published in the well respected journal Botany, Idaho State University researchers have documented how ferns, a primitive plant, “consume” sugars in early life stages.
“Ferns and their plant allies are very primitive plants that reproduce without seeds,” said Jeff Hill, ISU associate professor of biological sciences. “Sugar uptake from their environment during a microscopic phase of their life cycle is a potentially important part of their ecology. What we think is that ferns have the ability to pick up simple sugars from the soils when they germinate.”

Jeff Hill with ferns in the ISU Plant Physiology Laboratory.This challenges the basic beliefs that many have towards plants in general and opens the door for a wide range of new research on this topic.

Plants are generally thought of as self-feeders, which produce food for themselves through photosynthesis by processing light and inorganic materials. Scientists have long known that some plants, such as pitcher plants, are carnivorous and gain nitrogen and carbon nutrients by consuming insects. However, it has not been widely thought that plants uptake sugar from their environment for nourishment.

“The broad view of plants is that they are self-feeders, that by using photosynthesis they produce their own food and don’t have to go to the ‘refrigerator’ and they fix carbon from the air to eventually produce sugars,” Hill said. “We’re on the cusp of learning that, as an important part of their ecology, some plants in certain habitats have the ability to supplement and augment their photosynthetic ability by essentially grabbing free sugar from their environment.”

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