For this assignment I chose a very interesting article on the ScienceDaily website “How
Parasitic Plants Know When to Attack”. An article based on the research conducted by the
University of Georgia. Researchers discovered how parasitic plants steal their nutrients
from other plants and how it can lead to new techniques to control the thieving weeds.
Parasitic plant seeds can lay dormant for years and only start growing when there is a host
plant they can attach to. As plants grow they release strigolactone hormones into the soil,
this normally signals fungi to form a connection to the plant by doing this they each trade
nutrients. Parasitic plant seeds also have the ability to detect strigolactone which alerts
them germinate and attach to the host root and steal nutrients, making them the perfect root
radar. The parasitic plant seed’s strigolactone detection system has evolved from plant
genes that controls the seeds ability to detect fire. When smoke and ash leach into the soil
the parasitic seeds trigger an alert to attack nearby host roots. With this knowledge
researchers can develop synthetic compounds that interfere with the receptors that the
plant uses to detect strigolactone making them blind to the host. With this farmers can
eliminate the parasite stopping it from attacking their crops. This brings me back to our
text book on how plants adapt to their surroundings in order to survive. With the parasitic
seeds adapting and evolving they have the ability to take the smoke and ash leaching into