New Avenues of Silicon's Role in Plant Biology: Trends and Controversies

Research on silicon’s role in plants probably started with the Japanese scientist Isenosuke Onodera (1887-1954) and his study of rice blast disease in 1917. Although silicon benefitted the plant defense against the pathogen, overall research in silicon biology barely saw significant progress for the next seven decades. In 1994, Prof Emanuel Epstein published a review article on the anomaly of silicon in plant biology, which explores how silicon is so ubiquitous and yet was excluded from the conventional experiments with nutrient solution-cultured plants, leading to possible misrepresentation of the results, i.e., an anomaly. The article is unanimously considered seminal by silicon scientists worldwide. This field has seen much change since then.

Over the past 30 years, numerous studies have witnessed the beneficial roles of silicon under a myriad of biotic and abiotic stressors. These stressors include pathogenic invasion, insect-induced damage, herbivory, heat, chilling, drought, flooding, heavy metals, salinity, UV radiation, and nutrient deficiency stress. It is well established now that silicon confers beneficial effects under stressful environments, such as improved plant growth, productivity, and stress tolerance despite being non-essential to most plants in an optimal environment.

Nonetheless, how silicon confers beneficial effects under stressful environments is still something that has not been fully researched. Several hypotheses have been suggested to understand the modus operandi of silicon in plants; this is where most controversies in silicon biology are found. One such major topic is whether anatomical upgrades are the cornerstone of plant tolerance, or whether the driving force is silicon’s biochemical and physiological crosstalk with cellular signaling in plants. The goal of this Research Topic is to explore this rapidly evolving field and to provide enhanced or alternate understandings of silicon-induced responses in plant biology.

This Research Topic welcomes original research and review articles on the following (but not limited to) themes:

1. Modus operandi of silicon's role in plants.
2. Crosstalk of silicon with signaling molecules with special attention to H2O2, NO, and H2S
3. Silicon-mediated abiotic and biotic stress tolerance.
4. Novel findings that open new avenues and challenge the dominant perspective in silicon biology.
5. Recent interventions with nanotechnology, e.g., silicon nanoparticles.

Keywords: silicon, abiotic stress, silicon biology, plant response

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.