Plants prefer their kin, but crowd out competition when sharing a pot with strangers

[Iron_Lion]

I heard about this a while back on the Discovery Channel and did a little google search on the subject and came back with some interesting results. I figured I would post up here to open up discussion on the subject.

Plants prefer their kin, but crowd out competition when sharing a pot with strangers

Plants don't mind sharing space with their kin but when they're potted with strangers of the same species they start invigorating their leaves, a study by McMaster University reveals.

The research, which appears in the current issue of the American Journal of Botany, suggests non-kin plants will not only compete underground for soil nutrients, but will attempt to muscle out the competition above ground in the ongoing struggle for light.

It follows previous research from McMaster University which found that plants can recognize their kin through root systems and will compete more strongly for soil nutrients and water with non-sibling plants.

"This is the first study that shows plants are responding to kin at the above ground level," explains Guillermo Murphy, lead author of the study and a graduate student in the Department of Biology at McMaster University. "When they recognize their kin, they grow differently in shape, taller, with more branches and fewer resources into leaves, therefore allowing their siblings to access precious sunlight."

When researchers planted seedlings of a North American species of shade-loving Impatiens in the same pot, they reacted mildly with other offspring from the same mother plant. But when planted among non-kin of the same species, the plants shift extra resources into growing leaves.

"This supports previous research that plants are capable of complex social behaviour and will exhibit altruistic behaviour, giving their siblings a competitive edge in the wild," says Murphy.

In a previous study, led by Susan Dudley, associate professor of biology at McMaster, the Great Lakes sea rocket or Cakile edentula, which flourishes on beaches, showed altruistic behavior among its kin at the root level. When nearby strangers were detected, the sea rocket shifted resources to roots, fighting for precious water and soil nutrients.

This all makes sense on an ecological level, says Murphy. Sea rockets would have easy access to sunlight in its natural beach habitat and therefore, would struggle for nutrients underground. Conversely, Impatiens thrive in the shady woodlands, where moisture is plentiful, but sunlight is scarce.

The roots seem to tell siblings from strangers, he says, whether the change in behaviour is above or below ground. But simply placing them beside one another, in separate pots, did not produce the same results.

In the lab, researchers germinated the seeds from Impatiens collected in the field, to ensure they were properly grouped by sibling and non-siblings.

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McMaster University, one of four Canadian universities listed among the Top 100 universities in the world, is renowned for its innovation in both learning and discovery. It has a student population of 23,000, and more than 140,000 alumni in 128 countries.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-11/mu-ppt111609.php

Plants Can Recognize and Prefer Their Kin

HAMILTON, ONTARIO, CANADA–The apparently passive garden plant is not as easy-going as people assume, at least not with strangers. Researchers at McMaster University have found that plants become competitive when forced to share a pot with strangers of the same species, but they are more friendly when potted with their siblings.

“The ability to recognize and favor kin is common in animals, but this is the first time it has been shown in plants,” said Dr. Susan Dudley, associate professor of biology at McMaster University in Hamilton.”When plants share their pots, they get competitive and start growing more roots, which allows them to grab water and mineral nutrients before their neighbors get them,” Dudley explains.

Biologist Susan Dudley is the first to discover that plants recognize their kin. “It appears, though, that they only do this when sharing a pot with unrelated plants; when they share a pot with family they don’t increase their root growth,” the biologist says.

Because differences between groups of strangers and groups of siblings only occurred when they shared a pot, the root interactions may provide a cue for kin recognition. Though they lack cognition and memory, Dudley says the study shows plants are capable of complex social behaviors such as altruism towards relatives.

Like humans, says Dudley, the most interesting plant behaviors occur beneath the surface.

Dudley and her student, Amanda File, observed the behavior in sea rocket, Cakile edentula, a member of the mustard family native to beaches throughout North America, including the Great Lakes, where McMaster is located near Lake Ontario.

Sea Rocket
The American sea rocket grows on sandy beaches above the high tide line. The two biologists grew batches of sea rocket in pots of four, either with specimens from the same maternal family or from several different families.Those growing with strangers had a greater mass of roots after two months of growing than those sharing pots with siblings.

Gardeners might want to use this discovery to change their plant arrangements, placing siblings close to one another.

“Gardeners have known for a long time that some pairs of species get along better than others, and scientists are starting to catch up with why that happens,” says Dudley. “What I’ve found is that plants from the same mother may be more compatible with each other than with plants of the same species that had different mothers.

“The more we know about plants, the more complex their interactions seem to be, so it may be as hard to predict the outcome as when you mix different people at a party,” she joked.

How the plants learn which neighbor is a relative is still a mystery. Dudley speculates that a protein or chemical signal specific to each plant’s family might be secreted and detected by other roots nearby.

The study was supported by a grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. It appeared recently in the Royal Society journal “Biology Letters.”--ENS

Source: http://windstar.org/uncategorized/plants-can-recognize-and-prefer-their-kin/

 

[Eatatjoes]

Interesting read

Plants have feelings and intelligence too
What's next for the vegans? Terrans, people who only eat dirt.

 

[ahhhavalanche!]

Interesting reads, I was all excited since i grow 5 strains together (GHS mixed packs), but then they mentioned that the plants only interact through the roots. Unfortunately this does not apply much to indoor cannabis (where space is really at a premium) since the plants are almost always potted separately. I wonder if plants in a DWC hydro setup exhibit the same reaction since the roots float around each other rather than being locked into a matrix like in soil.

 

[IncredibowlBoss]

On that note, does anyone have any experience growing multiple plants in the same (larger-than-usual) container, either a bed, or a giganto pot? I've been toying with the idea for a little bit - if it's anything like herb gardening, you'll not want to plant different strains together because it'll affect taste, but I've read numerous articles about interacting root zones that would imply that everyone in the pot/plot would benefit from the shared root zone.

Any thoughts?

 

[woolybear]

Another reason to monocrop... I have a bunch of clones that should be outdoors now, as I don't want them to affect the yield of my main plants... Shitty weather for guerilla gardening today unfortunately lol

 

[TreeTopHi]

wow, all I can say! lol. I'm working on a indoor setup now and I think I may even give this a "test run" and see how the girls act together...

 

[Phaeton]

Dang, I just post on this in the indoor grow forum.

A note for IncrediBowl:
I tried SOG with 5" spacing and separate pots, it was OK, but not the big deal I expected, quicker is all.
Then I tried a tray with 14 plants together with 5" spacing. It yielded far more than twice as much. Each plant grew as if it had the entire tray to itself, the only limit was light. I have lots of light.
The potted plants slowed their growth when the roots hit the edge of the container, 4", and would not grow full speed anymore.
Unpotted plants probably slow down also when the roots hit the edge of the tray, 18" x 24", so grow full speed the whole time.

A very large difference, all the grow tricks used on the rootbound plants are used on the free plants as well (water, nutes, temps, trim, light freqs, ventilation, no co2).

I did not connect this to the fact all my plants have been the same clone. Going on three years now, definitely siblings. Glad I did not try this with a mixed batch, I would have had my answer and not gone back again.

 

[phatsesh]

phaeton ,so your saying the beds yeild much more than the individual pots?

 

[Phaeton]

Yes.

I just finished a harvest on one of the trays, measured 16" x 34" with 12 plants. Vegged to 12".
Individual pot yield used to be approx 11 gram per main cola per plant, lotsa small quarter gram popcorn airbuds, I did not remove those from the plant during harvest.
The tray yield is 17 grams per main cola, the popcorn became secondary colas, bulking up to between .5 and 5 grams per bud, 3.5 ounces for the tray. Definitely worth harvesting.

Measure and weigh, I was off in my preharvest guess. I expected way more than twice as much and it was about an even double. I will accept that.

More care was taken on light at night also, previously I would use a flashlight almost weekly for some reason or another, now green LED lights only. I understand this may also have a bearing on yield.

I had a visit from another grower, he wanted to actually see this tray he had heard of.
Something the had tried and experienced total fail at, and he said another friend had also failed to get a trayful to produce. Seeing was believing, he will try again.
Maybe I am lucky in my bagseed strain, but a full half pound came off the tray, all the plants growing together in one large tangle as if they were alone in the world.

I am relatively new at this and my yields are smaller than what I read about, but I am assuming this is across the board and the ratio's of the yields should be similar for the larger producing growers same as mine.

 

[W.Less Monk]

Interesting. Thanx for sharing.

 

[CannaKings]

I have always observed this, but good to see some science behind it!

 

[HushemFlupskluk]

Absolutelly fascinating! How it all is dialed into the genetics?

 

[noreason]

Thanks for sharing these infos IL,they're very interesting.

 

[Bass Akwards]

Potency Boost On The Flip-Side?

Potency Boost On The Flip-Side?

Would there be the trade-off in yield if the "bed of siblings" concept were combined with planting a second species to trigger a stress response? Several fast growing, easily available, grasses are known to provoke allelopathic reactions: Annual Rye, Red Clover, and White Clover.

A thin line of seeds could be sown around the perimeter of the bed, and between rows of siblings. They'll grow quickly in the primo environment of most grow-mixes, so that by the time of harvest, the roots of both species will be fully engaged.

Hopefully, the timing wouldn't diminish yield as much as it increased frostiness/sparkle/potency/aroma, ... or not.

 

[Maj.Cottonmouth]

Plants be crazy

 

[imadoofus]

at what level are the plants able to deduce between siblings or competition?

 

[inquest]

This makes me think of two questions....

If you had a slower growing strain and a more vigorous strain, could you use the slower strain to push the vigorous strain into even better growth?

And, I've always wanted to plant some nitrogen "fixing" plants, such as legumes, along side of some buds and see what happens.

 

[Phaeton]

I am tying this to an old growing tale from my youth.
All mj strains were considered one and plant to plant variation was considered basicly nonexistant. The difference between drug plant and fiber plant was in the cultivation.
To get fiber the seeds were planted 1/2" apart and allowed to grow. The plants would shoot straight up, no branching to speak of until 20' tall.
To get drug the seeds were planted 3' apart and the tops pinched.
Same seeds were used for both plants. I will mention these are those famous plants that today's plants are 20 time better than.

If the above was based on the roots detecting a non-self plant then the shared pot would make the plant tall and tall and tall instead of better.

Old school nickel's worth.

 

[joeuser]

It nature! Animals and people do the same thing.

 

[señorsloth]

lol phaeton! have you ever smoked hemp? it grows wild all over the place in my town, and trust me, though it may smell like bubblegum and be covered in sticky trichomes it wont get you even a little high no matter how much of it you smoke, and trust me, as a kid i smoked PLENTY of it trying! the potency is in the genetics and and hemp genetics have almost no thc at all, they could grow wild for a thousand generations but if all the plants have no thc to start with, it's never gonna go up, not in the midwest anyway...lol i will also note that the potency doesn't change wether the plant is the only one in the field or choking themselves out in huge fields of 12 foot tall monsters(it's a helluva thing to see though! looking up to realize your under the canopy of a huge forest of cannabis can make you feel like those strain hunter dudes, even if it's all basically rope and seeds!).

i think of double planting or multiple planting sort of like cooking corn dogs in the microwave, lol one corn dog takes 2 minutes, 2 corn dogs cooked separately takes 4 minutes, but 2 corn dogs cooked at the same time only take like 2:30...i have grown using beds and i have gown multiples in a pot. i have always noticed that 2 plants in 1 pot or many plants in a bed need much less soil per plant. they sort of share the soil.

this can be useful with strains like og kush, that are like half big thick bare stalks and half little golf ball buds, on their own it's hard to space them close enough to get a decent yeild, but 2 clones in a 1 gallon bag can significantly improve your yeild if you take the time to train them properly.

it is also useful where height is an issue, as a communal bed of clones could be much shallower than even tightly spaced grow bags, as each plant will need less soil, you increase the efficiency of your floorspace to near 100%, which alone could be a significant increase if you are using round pots and spacing them apart. on another not it means that soil could be kept the same depth as before as well but provide the plants with much more room to spread their roots.

as these articles sort of point out, marijuana roots aren't going to physically choke each other, more like compete with each other, if they are different strains, which would be a good thing. but if they are all clones from the same mother, i would think the clones would not recognize each other as even separate plants and would carry on just the same as if you had bent one plant longways in a bed and buried the trunk. the article also mentions that the leaves get bigger in an effort to collect more light and block out neighbors, but in a situation with one large bed of soil/coco clones can be placed very close together and defoliated somewhat, to form a tight sea of green, with a bed, spacing can be adjusted to perfection after just a few runs, to completely optimize your yield out of a given space.

the drawback being that to be most efficient in cabs and some grow spaces a lot of times beds must be custom made, and getting the hang of watering them correctly and getting good even drainage can take time.