How non-mycorrhizal plants obtain the unavailable nutrients they need from the soil?
Plants can perform many of the same actions that mycorrhiza do...chemical secretion, enzyme creation, etc. Plants that have adapted to grow in areas where there are unavailable nutrients have likely also evolved some mechanism to access those nutrients. However, I have a hard time imagining a system in which an essential nutrient is completely unavailable...it might be in very short supply and highly competed for, but not completely unavailable.
Another option is this...the non-mycorrhizal plant lives in a community with mycorrhizal plants. The mycorrhizal plants uptake the "unavailable" nutrient, and sooner or later they dies, or at least drop off leaves and branches. Then they decompose, releasing the "unavailable" nutrient into the soil in an available form, which can then be taken up by a non-mycorrhizal plant.
Dear Noa Lincoln
I agree with your second option that non-mycorrhizal plants lives in a community with mycorrhizal plants, that indirectly makes the unavailable nutrients available to the non-mycorrhizal plants. But at the same time mycorrhiza also helps in more uptake of nutrients and water, as increasing the surface area, so what can be the probable mechanism in non-mycorrhizal plants to maintain the constant uptake of nutrients and water needed for the better growth and development of plants.
Iʻm not sure that there is an offset mechanism, although I am also not an expert in mycorrhiza. But my thought would be this, that mycorrhiza, as I understand it, are not free. The plant has to pay the fungus in carbon in order to gain the extra nutrients. So there is a cost and a benefit. Non-mycorrhizal plants may not get the benefits, but they also do not pay the costs. So it seems to me like simply different survival strategies that may or may not more-or-less balance out. The mycorrhizal plants may fare better in some situations, the non-mycorrizal in others, but neither strategy is so much better than the other across all situations to abandon the other all together.
Great question...and I hope someone else with more expertise chimes in.
Non-mycorrhizal plants releases enzymes through their roots in the rhizosphere which may help to breakdown of plant unavailable nutrients in the soil to plant available form resulted more uptake by the plants Plants also secrete some growth hormones which influences the microbial population in the rhizosphere that enhanced population also helps plants to mobilize soil unavailable nutrients by dissolving/breakdown it by the action of microbial releasing enzymes..
I am agreed with Prof. Tarafdar. Nutrient cycling by the decomposition of mycorrhizal plant's residue may also be helpful for the nonmycorrhizal plants for gaining the unavailable nutrients in the soil .
Dear Dr. Rafiq Lone,
Root exudates composed of carboxylates influence nutrient availability in soil in non-mycorrhizal plants.
Carboxylated e.g. malate, citrate, oxalate are LOA (Low-molecular-weight organic acids) anions which are able to desorb nutrients sorbed on organic matter, clays and oxides.
Hans Lambers and his team showed that there would be a tradeoff between the carboxylate level and mycorhizes density.
Besides, phosphatase plays an important role in P availability.
Michel-Pierre Faucon
Non--mycorrhizal plants obtain their nutrients dose through their elevated root activity , better root configuration and defense apparatus as well. Certain soil management practices do aid in building up the better microbial activity vis-à-vis soil enzymes . so there are many ways , plants do get benefit from desirable changes in soil environment .
Information provided by Michel-Pierre Faucon is appropriate for nonmycorrhizal absorption of soil phosphorus.
Non-mycorrhizal plants also possess ability to inflict the desired changes within the plant rhizosphere for better microbial diversity ( functional as well as structural ) , thereby , facilitating solubilization , complexation , chelation processes , so that the nutrients like P, K, Fe, Mn, Zn have better intensity factor..
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