Arbuscular mycorrhizal association regulates global root-seed coordination

Yang, Qingpei and Guo, Binglin and Lu, Mingzhen and Liu, Yanjiw and Kardol, Paul and Reich, Peter B. and Bardgett, Richard and Cornelissen, Johannes H. C. and Kraft, Nathan J. B. and Díaz, Sandra and Wright, Ian J. and He, Nianpeng and Hogan, James Aaron and Pei, Yuxin and Han, Qinwen and Li, Zhenjiang and Wang, Zheng and Yang, Wanqin and Ding, Junxiang and Yang, Zhongling and Wu, Huifang and Carmona, Carlos and Valverde-Barrantes, Oscar J. and Li, Dezhu and Cai, Jie and Zeng, Hui and Zhang, Yue and Ren, Weizheng and Zhao, Yong and Yang, Xitian and Fan, Guoqiang and Wang, Junjian and Li, Guoyong and Kong, Deliang (2025) Arbuscular mycorrhizal association regulates global root-seed coordination. Nature Plants, 11 (9). 1759–1768. ISSN 2055-026X

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Abstract

Terrestrial plants exhibit immense variation in their form and function among species. Coordination between resource acquisition by roots and reproduction through seeds could promote the fitness of plant populations. How root and seed traits covary has remained unclear until our analysis of the largest-ever compiled joint global dataset of root traits and seed mass. Here we demonstrate that seed mass and seed phosphorus mass scale positively with root diameter in arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) plants, depending on variation in root cortical thickness instead of root vessel size. These findings suggest a dual role of AM association in phosphorus uptake and pathogen resistance which drives the global root–seed coordination, instead of initially expected resource transport via root vessels as the main driver. In contrast, we found no relationship between root traits and seed mass in ectomycorrhizal plants. Overall, our study reveals coordination between roots and seeds in AM plants, which is probably regulated by root–mycorrhizal symbiosis, and may be crucial in shaping global plant diversity and species distributions.