The Living Soil: How Unseen Microbes Affect the Food We Eat (360 Video)

by the year 2050 about 2 billion more people may live on planet Earth than do today that's more than 200 times the population of New York City and all of these people will need to eat Farmers around the world grow tons of food mainly plants like corn soybeans and rice but with our planet's limited Land and Water Resources Farmers may not be able to meet our needs scientists are researching ways to grow more food without using more land or more water or more chemicals that could harm the environment important new research focuses on the soil in which plants [Music] grow soil is full of microscopic life fungi protozoa nematodes and bacteria some of these organisms can be dangerous to plants and some such as m corizo fungi or pseudomonas bacteria can be [Music] beneficial up to a billion bacteria can be found living in just one teaspoon of soil but all bacteria are not the same scientists are learning that different bacterial species can play different roles in the successes or failure of a farmer's crop a plant is rooted in the soil it cannot hunt for food elsewhere or move out of Harm's Way what a plant can do is release hormones and other chemical signals certain kinds of soil bacteria sense these signals and travel to the plant's [Music] route once there they may live on the root surface or they may enter and live inside the root some of these bacteria feed the plant by collecting and digesting mineral nutrients from the soil other bacteria defend the plant from disease-causing organisms and viruses bacteria have even been found to protect the plant from drought by coating the root with a sticky goo called bofilm scientists are studying how these bacteria can be used strategically to produce healthier [Music] crops for example rice plants in one field are infected by a fungus common to the region while a nearby Field has a strong healthy crop of rice scientists may be able to identify the bacteria that make rice plants resistant to the fungus and then develop a method for adding these beneficial bacteria to Fields where the soil lacks them hopefully advances like this will help us use our planet's limited resources to produce enough food to meet our increasing needs in the coming years [Music]

Channel: Morehead Planetarium and Science Center

Views: 310,958

Keywords: soil, bacteria, UNC, Dangl, Microbes, science, 360, biology, crops, plants

Id: -dhdUoK7s2s

Length: 3min 11sec (191 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 21 2017