Photo: Anton Gerasimov / Unsplash
Over 90 endemic Pandanus species in Madagascar. Stilt root aerenchyma for flood tolerance - directly applicable to rice and sorghum. Stilbenoids and neolignanes absent from all Indo-Pacific relatives.
Photo: Anton Gerasimov / Unsplash
Madagascar hosts over 90 endemic Pandanus species - screw pines adapted to seasonally inundated coastal and littoral forests, laterite and peat substrates, and conditions of extreme humidity. The genus is pan-tropical, but Madagascar's endemic species are chemically and genomically distinct from their Indo-Pacific relatives: their aerial roots produce stilbenoids and neolignanes absent from all non-Malagasy populations, and their stilt root aerenchyma - the gas-exchange tissue that enables survival during full inundation - deploys a distinct architecture from that found in African or Asian congeners.
The aerenchyma architecture of Pandanus stilt roots enables oxygen transport to root meristems during complete submergence - the same functional challenge faced by rice crops under flooding conditions, and the number one climate adaptation target for tropical food security research globally.
The rice connection: Flooding kills most C3 crops by anoxia - the root meristem suffocates without oxygen. Madagascar's Pandanus species have solved this problem using a stilt root aerenchyma system that is architecturally and genetically distinct from the SUB1A waterlogging tolerance pathway already engineered into some rice varieties. A second, independent genetic solution to the same problem - from 90+ endemic species worth of variation - is the agritech opportunity.