Les plantes sont-elles intelligentes ?
Oui, et bien plus que nous ne pourrions l'imaginer, nous répond Stefano Mancuso. Savant de renommée mondiale, fondateur de la neurobiologie végétale, il est le premier à avoir démontré que, comme tous les êtres vivants, les plantes discernent formes et couleurs, mémorisent des données, communiquent. Elles ont une personnalité et développent une forme de vie sociale basée sur l'entraide et l'échange. Véritable manifeste écologique, ce livre pionnier, qui a bénéficié d'une reconnaissance internationale, nous plonge dans un incroyable voyage au coeur du monde végétal. Un monde qui, en formant plus de 99 % de la biomasse, s'avère aujourd'hui indispensable pour l'humanité. Car si les plantes peuvent très bien vivre sans nous, nous ne survivrions pas longtemps sans elles ! À l'heure où l'on recherche d'autres modes de vie, où les ressources naturelles s'épuisent, nous avons tout à apprendre du monde végétal dont dépendent la survie et l'avenir de l'homme.
L'Intelligence des plantes a marqué un tournant dans notre façon de regarder les plantes. La révolution des plantes décrit les solutions technologiques qui existent déjà dans le monde végétal et dont nous ne pourrons plus nous passer dans le futur.
Auxin and the Communication Between Plant Cells.- Integrated Calcium Signaling in Plants.- MAPK Signaling.- Integrated Nod Factor Signaling in Plants.- Physiological Roles of Cyclic Nucleotide Gated Channels in Plants.- Signaling in Vesicle Traffic: Protein-Lipid Interface in Regulation of Plant Endomembrane Dynamics.- Signaling to the Actin Cytoskeleton During Cell Morphogenesis and Patterning.- Signaling via Plant Peroxidases.- Signaling and Cell Walls.- Ionic Loops and Rebounds: Oxygen-Deprivation Signaling in Plants.- Signaling in Plant Gravitropism.- Signaling in Phototropism.- Signaling in the Circadian Clock.- Vesicle Trafficking in Plant Pathogen Defence.
In the last half century, because of the raising world population and because of the many environmental issues posed by the industrialization, the amount of arable land per person has declined from 0.32 ha in 1961-1963 to 0.21 ha in 1997-1999 and is expected to drop further to 0.16 ha by 2030 and therefore is a severe menace to food security (FAO 2006). At the same time, about 12 million ha of irrigated land in the developing world has lost its productivity due to waterlogging and salinity. Waterlogging is a major problem for plant cultivation in many regions of the world. The reasons are in part due to climatic change that leads to the increased number of precipitations of great intensity, in part to land degradation. Considering India alone, the total area suffering from waterlogging is estimated to be about 3.3 million ha (Bhattacharya 1992), the major causes of waterlogging include super- ous irrigation supplies, seepage losses from canal, impeded sub-surface drainage, and lack of proper land development. In addition, many irrigated areas are s- jected to yield decline because of waterlogging due to inadequate drainage systems. Worldwide, it has been estimated that at least one-tenth of the irrigated cropland suffers from waterlogging.
Plant neurobiology is a newly emerging field of plant sciences. It covers signalling and communication at all levels of biological organization - from molecules up to ecological communities. In this book, plants are presented as intelligent and social organisms with complex forms of communication and information processing.
Authors from diverse backgrounds such as molecular and cellular biology, electrophysiology, as well as ecology treat the most important aspects of plant communication, including the plant immune system, abilities of plants to recognize self, signal transduction, receptors, plant neurotransmitters and plant neurophysiology. Further, plants are able to recognize the identity of herbivores and organize the defence responses accordingly. The similarities in animal and plant neuronal/immune systems are discussed too. All these hidden aspects of plant life and behaviour will stimulate further intense investigations in order to understand the communicative plants in their whole complexity.
