Salt loving bacteria help plants in salty soils

Crops growing on salty soil do less well than their on none salty soil growing counterparts. And this is a problem, as salinity affects huge swatches of soil all over the world. Now a group of Indian researchers decided to find out if salt loving bacteria could help plants grow on salty soils.

Using the pathogens tricks to gain resistance

Plants and pathogens are involved in a tug of war. A lot of that fight takes place in the extracellular space, the space between cells, in plant tissues. There plants secrete an arsenal of defence molecules, like proteases, glycosidases and lipases. Pathogens do this as well including some inhibitors. So how come those inhibitors don’t inhibit the pathogen’s own arsenal?