Taking a much closer look at corn plants

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The corn plant is a big, complicated food producer. And even though farmers have been raising corn in some form for more than 9,000 years, researchers are still learning more about how this plant works. Case in point is a new report from the University of Missouri showing that researchers are turning to nuclear medicine tools to better understand the innards of the corn plant.

Missouri researchers working along with the University of Bern, Switzerland, Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York and with USDA turned to radioisotopes to trace the movement of essential nutrients and hormones through the corn plant.

The key is to find ways that natural resistance using the corn plant's built-in systems as a tool. In its work the team injected radioisotope tracers in healthy and rootworm-infested corn plants. In their work the researcher looked at auxin, which is a powerful plant hormone which is involved in stimulating new root growth. Said Richard Ferrieri, research professor, MU Interdisciplinary Plant Group: "Our target was to follow auxin’s biosynthesis and movement in both healthy and stressed plants and determine how it contributes to this process."

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Source: Farm Industry News