Siderophores - Agrobiotechnology in turfgrasses

Sidero, from the classical Greek iron, helps us to understand the essential functionality of these compounds. Siderophores are organic iron chelating compounds that are used to chelate iron. PGPR produced, stimulating symbiotic plant-micro-organism relationships.

Iron is one of the 17 essential elements currently identified as essential for plant development. At the same time, this element is found in the earth's crust in abundance in the form of Fe⁺³insoluble and not available for direct assimilation. Assimilable inorganic forms of iron such as Fe⁺2 are much less present in soils.

Neither plants nor microorganisms can assimilate forms of iron such as Fe⁺³

Nature's mechanism to solve the shortage of available soluble iron was the secretion of organic molecules capable of making Fe⁺³ abundant was assimilable by organisms.

Microorganisms secrete so-called siderophoresThese are low molecular weight compounds that capture existing iron and make it assimilable by plants and micro-organisms.

An example of a micro-organism producing siderophores are the pseudomonasThese colonise the roots of crops such as caespitose, and increase the concentration of available iron. In addition, their presence significantly improves resistance to bacteria y mushrooms (Elad and Baker 1985; Neilands and Leong 1986; Loper and Buyer 1991).

Pseudomonads are an example of siderophore producers.

These chelating compounds can not only extract iron from insoluble hydroxides, but also from other complexes such as ferric citrate, ferric phostate, iron transferrin, ferritin or iron bound to polysaccharides.

The production of siderophores depends on a number of different factors:

• Iron concentration in the soil
• Aeration
• Proportion of elements such as C,N, P, K
• pH
• Light
• Trace elements and their interactions.

Promoting soil microbial life is crucial for sustainable plant development and avoiding soil erosion. use of synthetic products in favour of a more sustainable agriculture and in accordance with current legislation.

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