Instead of relying on the soil for nutrients, plants may grab some of those essentials from airborne particles.
Feeding through leaves is already well-established in agriculture — farmers spray liquid nutrients on crops. But some plants can also absorb nutrients from dust that lands on their leaves, researchers report April 8 in New Phytologist. The team says this route may be an underappreciated source of nourishment in dusty, nutrient-poor ecosystems.
“Plants are not like animals; they cannot move,” says Anton Lokshin, a plant biologist at Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Be’er Sheva, Israel. “So they have to have strategies to absorb food and nutrients from the environment.”