Bacterial Batteries?

[jtb]

Bacterial Batteries?
Posted on February 4, 2015 by Stephen Smith

This may come as a shock to environmentalist, but plants cannot absorb organic material: only inorganic minerals and ions (cation exchange). Bacteria and fungi digest organic matter in the soil. Plant roots signal their nutritional needs to a different type of micro-organism in the soil generally called recyclers. The recyclers, in turn, digest the bacteria and fungi containing the requested nutrients making as many as 100 different inorganic minerals and ions available to crops. Another type of microorganism transports the inorganic minerals to plant roots in exchange for carbohydrates produced by plants.

This is a very complex communication system between many different types of microorganisms and plants. This article is evidence that varying electrical charges are the means of this communication.

This also raises an interesting question of origins: which came first, the microbes that make inorganic minerals available to plants, or, the organic material (dead plants) to feed the microbes?