Chemical strategies for iron acquisition in plants.

Iron is an essential element for plant nutrition. Although iron is the fourth most abundant element (3 %) of the earth's crust, it is not readily available because of its low solubility. Therefore, plants need an active mechanism to extract iron from the soil. They have evolved several chemical strategies to acquire iron ions and the physiology of these mechanisms has been known for a long time. Only recently, the use of molecular genetic approaches has led to a biochemical and molecular characterization of the players involved, thus providing an entry to the manipulation of iron uptake in plants.