Decoupling developmental and physiological adaptations: a strategy to unleash nutrient use efficiency in plants?

Authors

Cannelle Armengaud, Virginia Protto, Arthur Poitout, Gabriel Krouk, Sandrine Ruffel

Published in

Trends in plant science. Sep 04, 2026. Epub Sep 04, 2026.

Abstract

Plants respond to spatially and temporally variable soil nutrients through root architectural plasticity, regulation of uptake and assimilation per root unit, and plant-soil-microbiome interactions. Although often viewed as complementary, these responses can also behave as compensatory strategies. Under non-optimal nutrient distributions, plants may invest either in greater root proliferation or in higher uptake capacity per root unit. We propose that this development-transport relationship should be understood as an optimization problem, rather than an additive response. Comparable morphology-physiology trade-offs occur in other resource-acquiring organs, including the gut and the lungs. Tuning or partially uncoupling these constraints could redefine crop ideotypes as dynamic combinations of root architecture, physiological elasticity, and controlled rhizosphere outsourcing, opening new routes to improve nutritional efficiencies.

PMID:
42697760
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 05 Sep 2026.

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