Effect of exogenous phosphatase and phytase activities on organic phosphate mobilization in soils with different phosphate adsorption capacities

This study evaluated the effects of exogenous LASAP2 for acid phosphatase (APase) and LASAP3 for phytase of white lupin (Lupinus albus L.) on phosphorus (P) accumulation from organic P in soils. The potential for LASAP2-overexpressing tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum L.) to increase organic P in soil was examined in our previous study. However, LASAP2 has low specificity for phytate, the predominant form of unavailable P in the brown lowland soil. For the present study, we isolated the full length of LASAP3 cDNA and introduced it into tobacco plants using Agrobacterium-mediated transformation. Transgenic tobacco plants were grown in two different soils (Andosols and Regosols; high and low P-adsorption capacity, respectively) supplemented with either inorganic phosphate (+Pi) or phytate (Po) as the sole P source, or control conditions that lacked phosphorus (No P). Dry matter production and P content of the transgenic line was higher than that of wild type in all treatments. The ratio of P accumulation increase by exogenous enzymes was found to be dependent on the P treatment and soil type. In all lines, the increase in +Po was less than that in +Pi, but higher than in No P. The P uptake ability of plants in Regosols was higher than in Andosols for all treatments, suggesting that the P utilization efficiency of both Pi and Po is dependent on the solubility. In no soil type or P treatment was a significant difference found between LASAP2- and LASAP3-overexpressing lines. These results demonstrate that introducing an APase and phytase gene such as LASAP2 and LASAP3 into tobacco by genetic transformation is a promising strategy for improving P mobilization in soil, although the bottleneck for mobilization of phytate-P is not the specificity of the enzyme but its solubility in soils.