‘Plants too are endowed with decision making capabilities’, says a new study
As people often take calculated risks when facing significant life changes, researchers found that pea plants also make choices about how to grow and when based on an assessment of risk. The findings were published in the Cell Press journal Current Biology.
The research by Oxford University showed that pea plants tend to take risks in nutrient scarce situations for survival but can also play safe in less risky environments. To arrive at their findings, researchers grew plants with roots split between two pots, with one offering a constant supply of nutrients and the second with fluctuating supply. The average amount of nutrients in both pots remained the same during the course of experiment. Researchers observed the pea plants grew more roots into the pot with constant supply when it offered adequate supply. However, when the constant supply provided inadequate, the plants took a gamble and grew more roots into the pot with varying nutrient supply.
“To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of an adaptive response to risk in an organism without a nervous system,” said study author Professor Alex Kacelnik. “We do not conclude that plants
are intelligent in the sense used for humans or other animals, but rather that complex and interesting behaviors can theoretically be predicted as biological adaptations and executed by organisms on the basis of processes evolved to exploit natural opportunities efficiently.”Plants lack a nervous network and brain unlike animals but are known to respond to their surroundings. The pea plant experiment has revealed that plants, like humans, take risks when playing it safe does not work. That plants are passive entities, no longer holds true if the findings of the research are considered.
