SIlicification and Drought Resistance

One of the sorghum mutants we identified is missing the silicon transporter Lsi1. The mutant contains 0.025 of the wild type plant total silicon, with 80% of the mineral deposited in the roots. Using this mutant we study how silicon enhances the tolerance of sorghum to starvation and drought stress (Markovich et al., 2017,2022).