An investigation published by the journal Nature Ecology and Evolutionmade by scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen, in Germany, it revealed how sugar is produced and accumulates in seagrass meadows; apparently, this substance would have an important function in this medium.
“Here we show that seagrass sediments are true sweet spots in the sea containing surprisingly high concentrations of simple sugars, mainly in the form of sucrose.”says the research.
According to the study, the sugars found in the marine rhizosphere help reduce the carbon dioxide produced in the ocean, these being considered the most efficient meadows on the entire planet, even more than terrestrial forests. In addition, they revealed that this substance would be released in the form of sucrose, that is, like the table sugar we know.
“Seagrasses are among the most efficient sinks of carbon dioxide on Earth. Although carbon sequestration in terrestrial plants is related to the microorganisms that live in their soils, the interactions of seagrasses with their rhizospheres are poorly understood.
And then they stressed that this finding was unexpected, since sugars are consumed by microorganisms; Nevertheless, it was found that when there is “low oxygen”, phenolic compounds from oceanic meadows inhibit the microbial consumption of these sugars.
“Analyses of the rhizosphere community revealed that many microbes had the genes to degrade sucrose, but these were only expressed by a few taxa that also expressed genes to degrade phenolics. Given that we observed high concentrations of sucrose under three other marine plant species, we predict that the presence of plant-produced phenolics under low-oxygen conditions allows for the accumulation of labile molecules through aquatic rhizospheres.” explained the study on why this sucrose persists in ocean floors.
Meanwhile, it was stated that a square kilometer of these pastures can store up to twice as much carbon as terrestrial forests, a process that they do up to 35 times faster than tree bodies, but this is also thanks to the sucrose that is produced in the roots of marine plants.
“We estimate that in the seagrass rhizosphere worldwide there are between 0,6 y 1,3 million tons of sugar, mainly in the form of sucrose”, explained Manuel Liebeke, who is the head of the German research group, and to compare this figure, he stated that the sugar in the ocean is equivalent to “32 billion cans of Coca-Cola”.
Thus, Liebeke assured that if this process were not carried out in the ocean, then the carbon dioxide produced in this area would be released into the atmosphere, which would end up affecting current climate change. “They show that if sucrose in the rhizosphere of seaweed were degraded by microbes, at least 1.54 million tons of carbon dioxide would be released into the atmosphere worldwide… The amount of carbon dioxide emitted by 330,000 cars in a year”, warned the scientist, emphasizing the importance of this process, and the way in which the microbes of the grasses do not consume sugar.
