Iron is an essential nutrient for plants; although abundant at the Earth's crust, iron is extremely insoluble and its availability to plants is often inadequate to meet plant demand for optimal growth. Not only plants suffer for iron deficiency. Plants are the primary iron source for animals and humans; about two‐thirds of the world's population is at risk of iron‐deficiency‐induced anemia.
Understanding mechanisms of iron acquisition and allocation within the plant organs has been a goal since the first edition of the International Symposium on Iron Nutrition and Interactions in Plants, held in 1981 in Provo, Utah, USA.
Since then considerable progresses has been made: strategies used by different plant species to cope with iron deficiency have been defined and factors affecting iron availability in the soil and at the rhizosphere have been characterized. In recent years, the biochemical and molecular mechanisms underlying the physiological responses have been partially elucidated.
While deepening the knowledge in the different aspects of plant iron nutrition, the need of a multidisciplinary approach to the study of the efficiency of iron acquisition has become evident.
The main objective of the 11th International Symposium on Iron Nutrition and Interactions in Plants, was to bring together scientists from a broad range of disciplines in order to get a better insight of the different compartments affecting and affected by iron nutrition of plants: the soil, microbes, plants, and human beings.
The 11th edition of the Symposium was held in Udine, Italy, in June, 2002 and was attended by 150 participants coming from more than 20 countries. During the meeting 135 scientific contributions were presented, covering almost all aspects of plant iron nutrition and reporting data from many different experimental approaches. Exciting perspectives for understanding plant responses to limited iron availability have emerged from the fast‐growing field of molecular biology; however, the possibility of improving iron availability and its use efficiency through an appropriate management of the rhizosphere and of the whole soil‐plant‐environment system has also been envisaged. The importance of this knowledge for defining strategies for iron improvement of food crops clearly emerged.
In this special issue of Journal of Plant Nutrition, 32 contributions from those presented at the Symposium are collected and offered to the readers with the intention of stimulating further research and progress in the field of iron nutrition and interactions in plants.
Roberto Pinton
Chairman of the Symposium