4 CONCLUDING REMARKS
Plants adapt to growth in complex and competitive ecosystems during
their evolutionary history. They need to compete with interspecific and
conspecific plants for light, water, and nutrients, and communicate with
neighboring plants to anticipate upcoming biotic/abiotic challenges
(Ballaré & Austin, 2019, Effah, Holopainen & McCormick, 2019, Hodge,
Fitter & Robinson, 2013, Hortal et al. , 2017). However, only
some of the competition and communication mechanisms rely on the plant
genome. Plant microbiota have pivotal roles in nutrient solubility and
uptake, especially nitrogen, phosphorus, and iron (Adesemoye, Torbert &
Kloepper, 2008, Sharifi, Ahmadzadeh, Sharifi-Tehrani & Talebi-Jahromi,
2010). Microbiota also improve water use efficiency and osmotic stress
response (Fan, Hu, Huang, Huang, Li & Palta, 2015, Sharifi & Ryu,
2018c). The plant holobiome leverages the collection of its member genes
to optimize performance and survival. Plants have spatiotemporal layers
of defense consisting of rhizosphere microbes, endophytes,
pattern-triggered immunity, effector-triggered immunity, and recruited
natural enemies; each of these can efficiently suppress specific groups
of attackers (Carrión et al. , 2019, Sharifi & Ryu, 2017).
Because of these advantages conferred by microbiota, plants donate
10–30% of their carbon and nitrogen to the rhizosphere to organize
their microbiota.
Information and signal transferring systems play important role in plant
growth and survival. Plants decipher their complex habitat situations by
perceiving physical and chemical cues and signals directly from
neighboring plants or indirectly from their symbionts such as
mycorrhiza, endophytic fungi and dodder. Researchers characterized
signal types and signal mediators in plant interactions with other
members of ecosystem. It revealed that deaf and mute mutants of plants
have less ecological competence. However, plant may lost some of their
communication abilities during domestication and plant breeding
programs. Therefore, plant breeders and genetic engineers should have a
holistic view of plants as members of the holobiome. Otherwise, small
changes in key ecology-related genes may substantially affect plant
performance, a phenomenon called the butterfly effect.
Agricultural practices also affect plant-plant communication. We
aforementioned that no-tillage and minimum tillage systems preserve
common mycorrhizal network and endophytic fungi as mediators of wired
plant-plant communication. Moreover, Information can transfer between
plants in intercropping or from a crop to crop in next season. Thus,
recent finding in plant-plant communication can help us to manage
agricultural practices in order to exploiting plant ecological and
evolutionary ability to survive in competitive environment.